Project Snow

by Cherita Smith

  The glass shifts again. Bright-hued flowers and neon green grass bloom against the blue, a riot of color. But the colors quickly fade, the flowers wither to ash that swirls in the air.

  Amara watches her sisters, gauging their response. All are riveted—all except Chaya, who wears a look of cultivated boredom like it's the latest trend.

  Amara simply smiles to herself and continues. "All the world's scientists scratched their heads and scrambled about until they found a solution: a newly invented something or other to fill the hole. They called it The Mirror. And it worked... for a while."

  "I'm sorry," Chaya says, unapologetically. "But—the Mirror? Really? Feebs." She lifts an arched brow like a dare, then pulls out an aetherpad and holds onto it tight, nearly crushing the frame's psi-cognitive sensors. A fashion zine hums to life on the palm-sized oval of glass, tiny models springing up, posing in holographic scenes.

  Amara can't help but notice the models pose in ads featuring plenty of mirrors and azure blue backgrounds. She resists the urge to roll her eyes.

  "It's only feeble to you, Chaya. It made sense to them because the new sky was the first time the world below could be seen up above—the sky wasn't reflective before then. So yes, they called it The Mirror. And all was well. But one day, the Mirror began to crack..."

  The glass shudders and creaks, rippling slowly with cracks. The girls flinch from the sound.

  "It was a small crack. So small, only the scientists could see it. They're always the first to see the tiniest things, because they're the ones always looking. But when they told the government men, no one did anything. So the crack grew and grew. Until finally, the Mirror shattered and fell from the sky—"

  A crackling boom thunders through the lounge. The window shatters, imploding within. Glass flies through the air, sparkling like deadly jewels. The girls shriek and duck, covering their faces though they know it's only a technological trick of the light. Indeed, the shards dissolve in the air like digital mist, revealing the fully intact window, the everyday sherbert sky just beyond.

  "And that's how the air got filled with the infectious dust."

  "Oh, come on," Chaya says. "That is so not what happened, it's almost hilarious. This is one of Hunter's little tales, isn't it? Let me guess: he got it from some mystery holo. And you didn't actually see this holo yourself, did you?"

  Amara shrugs. "So what if Hunter told me—it still happened; he's seen the private holos. The Mirror is just what they called the sky before, you know..."

  What she doesn't say: Before infection set in, decimating the world's population. Before the world was remade by the Queen and her Court. Before there was ever a Queen.

  She doesn't have to say it—it's all there on the window for her sisters to see: an indigene woman stares out from the glass, her non-engineered skin pale with infection and papery thin, stretched tight over the hollows of her skull. Fine lines cross her face, the skin grooved and cracked like a map of parched earth. Her shoulders are hunched, her eyes milky and blank, two glazed marbles in a too withered face, framed by tufts of hair wispy and white like a cloud.

  Feral animals prowl around her, though the woman doesn't react. The animals pounce, leaping out from the glass to the sisters' paralyzed fear. A sickly squish tears through the room, the woman torn apart by the beasts. Arterial spray glitters in the air, digi blood frozen in shadow and light. The woman in the glass never cries out, doesn't once flinch, just stands there and lets the beasts have her, too empty and feeble to care.

  Amara rips off her bindi headpiece, shutting her eyes against the vivid images brought nearly to life. Her sisters share a collective shudder, each remembering their own lessons on infection, things seen and heard, things only imagined.

  The sharp hiss of the door further startles the girls. They bolt up, quiet and alert as the click of heels reverberates across the marble floor of the hall outside, a backbeat to Queen Zoya's lyrical voice. When the footsteps reach the door, the girls all snap to, straight-backed and eager, if a little afraid.

  (When it comes to the queen, everyone is always a little afraid.)

  Zoya sails through the room and stops at Amara, greeting her with a stroke of the cheek and a pat on the head, gently tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear. "It is time. Confirmation! How thrilled you must be."

  The queen grabs Amara's face and smooths her hair the way one would a pet, eyeing Amara with an almost predatory gaze. She turns Amara's face this way and that, her hold firm and her nails deep as she scrutinizes, her dark eyes filled with a calculated intensity that makes Amara feel like a science experiment.

  As if sensing Amara's discomfort, the queen takes a step back and surveys her daughter with one of her infamous smiles, disconcertingly off. She then grips Amara's shoulders, pulling her into a too-tight embrace. "I can hear your heart," she whispers against the side of Amara's head. "It beats with the vigor of youth. To be young and on the cusp of confirmation..."

  Zoya breathes out a heavy sigh that looks to Amara like a moment of bliss, then releases her with a start as more footsteps sound in the hall.

  "Today is a big day," the queen says as Amara strains to see what lies beyond the door. "Good luck, my darling girl." A final pat on the cheek, then Queen Zoya vanishes as quick as she appeared.

  Saisha, standing closest to the door, peers out behind her. Then gasps.

  Two Guardsmen march in, their stiff postures and black uniforms starkly out of place in the room full of girls and glass and creamy soft things.

  Even if one of the Guardsmen is Hunter.

  For one flash of a moment, Amara swears Hunter might cry, he looks so wrecked. He glances away too soon to be sure. When his eyes leave her face, she feels the strangest twinge of loss.

  Saisha pounces. "It's time! Are you scared? You must be freaking out right now." She throws her arms around Amara, squeezing tight.

  Not to be left out, Tansy and Veda join in. Tansy mumbles congratulations into Amara's side, while Veda flings pudgy arms around Amara's legs, her tiny bangle bracelets clinking like cymbals. Amara nearly stumbles when Veda shakes her and yells, "Good luck 'Mawa!"

  Amara hugs each of her sisters back in return, their warmth blotting out the cold fear she's starting to feel. "You guys!" she laughs.

  "You can go outside now," Tansy points out. "You're so lucky."

  "Not lucky, just old."

  "I really don't see what the big deal is," Chaya says. "Confirmation isn't official until it's decreed at the ball. And I'd rather have a ball than some dumb scan. Like we haven't each done that a million times already."

  Amara smiles, pushing a lock of Chaya's hair back. "You'll get your ball too, Chaya. It'll be your turn to go through all of this sooner than you think. Just watch. I'll be off at Uni and the next thing you know, it's your sixteenth coming up and you're giving this exact same spee—"

  Hunter clears his throat. "We really should be going now," he says to the other Guardsman.

  Amara waits for him to say something to her, to look at her, to simply acknowledge her presence. When he doesn't, she gives him a look that says: okay, what's with you? To her sisters she says, "I guess this is it. When you see me again, I'll be a confirmed woman. Wish me luck!" She gives them all a final hug before she heads out the door to a chorus of Good luck!

  Even Chaya joins in.

  The girls before her shared similar rituals.

  * * *

  The group walks to the medlab in silence, Amara flanked on each side by a Guard. Dr. Bannerjee greets the trio, guides them across the blue-veined marble floors, past the frosted glass doors to one labeled ScanOps A.

  When the door slides open, Amara sucks in a deep breath to focus her mind. She follows the doctor and Hunter into the room, leaving the other Guardsman to take up a post outside.

  Dr. Bannerjee directs them down a short hall past glass cabinets and the tinted glass door of the observation deck, until they reach the bright white of the medlab proper. The room is empty
, except for a gleaming metal cart topped with supplies. And, of course, the scanner itself—a vast semi-circle of white with a body-sized tube in its center, a machine both sleek and hulking at once.

  The only windows in this lab are those that look into the room from the observation deck. The only decoration, an ornately carved screen in the far wall, behind which lies a small changing room. Amara walks to this small room and quickly slips into a gauzy exam gown that feels like air on her skin. She pauses to take a steadying breath before she heads back out to the lab.

  Dr. Bannerjee slides a medcuff around Amara's finger, giving it a quick squeeze before helping her onto the scanner's sleek metal table. He takes her blood, filling vial after vial with her life, placing the vials in a glass holder that makes her blood shimmer in the light.

  Next, the doctor next lowers the top of Amara's gown to examine her chest, skin and bones, to listen to her breath. She can feel Hunter's eyes on her at last. For the first time in a lifetime of medical exams, she is plagued by an acute self-consciousness. Hunter's gaze burns through her so thoroughly, she fears her medcuff might start to beep.

  Amara breathes in again and focuses, reduces her existence to the pair of brown hands that now mark up her skin. She tries hard to ignore the way Hunter's eyes follow the line of barely visible ink the doctor draws down her belly. She fails.

  "You can lie down now," Dr. Bannerjee says, gently pushing Amara onto the cold metal table.

  Cuffs spring up around Amara's neck and ankles and wrists, locking into place with a resounding click. Dr. Bannerjee gives each cuff a quick tug, avoiding Amara's gaze as he enters data into his trusty aetherpad. The room fills with a series of noisy beeps. When the machine starts to hum, Dr. Bannerjee hurries to the observation deck and the table slides into the scanner's dark heart.

  Hunter and the room disappear from her view, replaced by the smooth, hard lines of the scanner's interior. Ambient music drifts on the air, meant to ease her tension. Amara tries to focus on her breath like she's been taught to do, to let the music relax her despite the sudden swell of mixed emotion she feels.

  Finally, the digi voice whispers: “Confirmation scan commencing.”

  Colorful lights pulse overhead. The dancing lights arc over her, moving down from the top of her head to her toes. Quick. Simple. Painless. The digi voice announces: “Confirmation scan complete,” and a smile spreads across Amara's face.

  The bright light in the tube fades to black, the only illumination now from the glass door at her feet. Amara waits for the familiar click-hiss of the door being opened, the slight rumble of the table as it begins to slide out. Neither happens.

  Instead, the digi voice speaks again: “Operation initializing.”

  A pinprick of light shines on Amara where her sternum begins. The beam slides down her chest in one easy line, smooth and straight, following the line drawn by Dr. Bannerjee. It emits a strange sound, a faint scratch beneath the melodic hum of the music.

  When the light makes a second pass down her chest, Amara tries to place the sound, all of her senses on alert. She is so focused on the light, she can feel it as a pressure on her chest. It takes her a moment to isolate the sound, but she recognizes it with a shock: it's the sizzling pop of a frying samosa.

  Beneath the music and the sizzle, there is the strain of muffled voices: What is this? I can't... Have you gone mad?

  She lies as quiet as she can trying to decipher the voices, but the pressure on her chest is now a penetrating force, invisible fingers digging through her flesh, boring down to the bone. It burns too, the light does, although she feels no pain or heat. Maybe she only imagines it burns because a charred scent fills the air.

  The pressure on her chest penetrates deeper, the sizzling grows louder, the burnt scent close to unbearable. Amara strains to focus on the light, to understand why she feels anything at all as the beam begins its third pass down her torso, darkening from a clear white to a bright red.

  The music shuts off without warning, replaced with hollow bangs and thuds. For a moment, she has the feeling that she's done this before. Then there is silence, filled only with Amara's heavy breath.

  And the unmistakable hiss of her burning skin.

  A scream bubbles up inside her, but the collar at her neck keeps the scream trapped. Panic overtakes her. She closes her eyes, tenses and bucks against the restraints. The laser burns hotter, bores deeper.

  Her mind burns too, awash in blood. Blood on her hands, coursing down her arm in red rivulets. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drowning in blood.

  Her eyes fly open and the visions disappear. Pressure creeps in at the edge of her sight. It throbs in her temples and builds in her skull, spreading out across her forehead and nose, over and under her eyes and pushing down on her face until the world fades to black.

  III.

  FINGERS SNAP NEAR Amara's face. Glass crunches. A powerful scent rises up to her nostrils, acrid and biting. Medicinal. A distant voice calls her name.

  Amara... Amara—get up!

  Amara opens her eyes. Hunter's face swims into view, his wheatish skin and gold-flecked green eyes blurred at the edges like a water-logged dream. He leans over her with a small vial in hand, his jacket off, the sleeves of his uniform rolled up. Is it odd that she notices the light brown of his skin, the lean corded muscle and veins? She tries to sit, but falls back. Hunter pulls her up, his face flooded with relief.

  "Is that it?" she slurs, grogginess weighing her down like a brick. She hadn't expected it to pack such a nauseating punch, that last scan. But confirmation is worth it. Her eyes open wider at the thought. "Am I confirmed now?"

  Hunter answers with a grim smile that matches the dire look in his eyes. He applies a clear plaster strip to her chest. Cold gel oozes against her skin, shocking her fully awake.

  Amara scans the room slowly. She finds it like before: stark and white, minus the dark windows of the observation deck. Metal cart topped with supplies. But Dr. Bannerjee is nowhere to be found. She struggles to make sense of the fact that it is Hunter, and not the doctor, who applies a new-skin plaster to her still bare chest.

  "There," Hunter says, tamping down the edges. "It's only a surface wound, and we got the plaster on in time. It won't even leave a scar."

  "What? Why would it—who gets scars?" Amara looks down at her chest, and her eyes widen with shock. A thin line of charred flesh runs from her sternum to her belly. She looks around again, observant and anxious. A dark red spray of droplets stands out on the white floor, chilling her to the bone. "Hunter... where's the doctor?"

  Hunter pulls off the medical gloves he's wearing, tosses them on the cart. He pulls up her exam gown and snaps it closed, delicately covering her, then takes her face in his hands.

  "Amara..." Hunter contorts her name into the sound of gut-wrenching agony. "We don't have a lot of time, so I need you to listen. The whole point of today, it wasn't... it was..." Hunter takes a very deep breath before he continues. "The point of today was... you. Your heart. To cut it out and deliver it to the Queen."

  He says it so matter-of-factly, his face so straight and solemn and sad, it must be a bad joke. Amara cocks her head, waiting for a punchline that never comes.

  "But that's... ridiculous. Cut out my heart? I suppose you have a secret holo explaining that too, right?"

  A rough whisper. "I do, yes."

  Hunter pulls an aetherpad from his jacket and inserts a disc. 3D icons float on the screen. He scrolls through them quickly, until a tiny cyclone of holotext appears, ready for uplink as it swirls around one hologram of a face she sees every day: her own.

  Queen Zoya's soft voice floats through the aether to Amara's own ears:

  Guardsman. Your assignment is this: escort the Princess Amara to the medlabs, ScanOps A. Bring me her heart when the procedure is done. All has been arranged; you need only to secure the organ and ensure its safe transport to my personal chambers. The Chancellor will await your arrival...

  When the queen's voice fades,
there is a long silence like death. Then, Amara laughs. She laughs shrilly and wildly, feeling herself coming unhinged as she does. For a moment, she has the idea that she's been here before, being dismantled and handed her death. A flash of a familiar brown face, dark eyes filled with tears.

  But here and now, there is just Hunter, holding her gaze with his unwavering eyes. Eyes that are far too sad and too serious to hold anything but truth. He begs for her silence with a finger on her lips and a pleading look in his eyes, the weight of his gaze heavy enough that she presses her mouth closed tight. Laughter reveals itself to be fear, seeping in through her pores like a noxious gas.

  "I'm sorry," Hunter says, "but I need you to hold it together for just a bit if I'm going to get you out of here safe and alive, okay? Can you do that for me?"

  Amara winces at his words, but nods anyway.

  "ScanOps, please report." A voice crackles through the room, startling Amara deeper into quiet as adrenaline snakes through her veins. "ScanOps, status requested."

  Hunter taps the tiny mobud in his ear, so only he can hear the speaker. "ScanOps active," he says. He listens intently with his eyes on Amara and a finger on his lips, then adds, "Subject in progress... will do."

  Hunter turns to one of the glass cabinets and retrieves a black bag. He digs through it and pulls out a Guard uniform and a pair of black boots. "Put these on. Quick. We have to go, now."

  When Amara is dressed, Hunter slips the bag over his head so it hangs across his chest, then steers Amara down the narrow hall toward the medlab's main door. She avoids the dark splatter, afraid to confirm if it's what she suspects.

  They pass the observation deck door. The door is open a crack, a small object stuck in its frame. Amara picks it up; Dr. Bannerjee's glossy name badge now has a red stain in the corner. The door hisses open when she picks up the badge, revealing a small hump at the far end of the darkened room. What she's able to see from the faint light: a snatch of medlab attendant blue. The white of a doctor's jacket. And a Guardsman's black boots, like the ones she now wears.