by J B Cantwell
Marko Ruiz
Designation: Orange
James Overton
Designation: Orange
Stephanie Carter
Designation: Orange
Marko stood right in front of me. I held my head up, trying not to seem weak or scared. He turned and nodded at me.
“Hi,” he said. There was no trace of malice in his voice, no sarcasm.
I ducked my head and slipped a step backward.
He blew out an exasperated breath and turned away again.
At lease half the people standing in line were Orange. Criminals. Only those who had been to jail were given the designation. Two tours in either the Service or the burning plants were the only ways they could wipe their slates clean, back to Green, eligible to work. Reds were actively trying to pay down their sentences. But Oranges had already served one round, shedding their Red status. Once an Orange, they no longer owed any time to the government, but nobody wanted to give an Orange a job, and there was no reward for the service of a Red or Orange designate. They couldn’t buy their way out of their crimes. The only way back to Green was to serve another tour.
I shrunk into myself, trying not to look conspicuous, pulling the hood of my thin sweatshirt over my hair to hide it, tucking each strand of pink beneath it. What an idiot I had been. Now, surrounded by this hard-edged crowd, I was suddenly horrified by my own frivolity.
The Oranges looked older than the other recruits, more weathered, even though I was certain some of them were close to my age. I wondered what each of them had done to land them the designation. Most eyes didn’t carry the ringed-red sign of a Burn employee. That meant they had all served in the military.
And survived.
Criminals or no, I was standing among the elite of the elite.
Several boys my age stood ahead of me, ahead of the Orange man who had greeted me. I looked backward at the others who were lining up behind us, looking for some sign that Alex had turned up. I hadn’t wanted him to come, worried that he would succeed in talking me out of joining. But now I felt so exposed, lost in this threatening place. The Oranges. The city. Despite my resolve to leave, I found I was waiting for him, hoping he had succeeded in making some alternate plan that would keep us both alive.
There were plenty of Oranges, that was for sure. But I was also surprised and comforted by the number of Greens I saw. As I glanced around, I took in the variety of body types. They weren’t all huge like the ones who came home to show off their success. Those guys must have been trained up, their bodies bulking and hardening as they made their way through boot camp and, later, service. There were girls here, too. They had come, just like me. And they weren’t big, either, even the ones who looked as though they’d been training for this their whole lives.
Maybe it really would be anybody’s game, male or female.
The line crawled. As we made our way around the front of the building, the giant cathedral across the street towered over us like an omen. Its great golden doors were closed, but despite the bright day, lights shone from within the building. I wondered how many people went to church anymore. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been remade inside into something different by now, some other sort of building more necessary than a place to worship a god nobody seemed to believe in.
It was beautiful, though. It stirred something in me to see it, stretching so high above my head that I could barely make out the top spires. I looked at the streets surrounding us, and was suddenly struck with a realization I hadn’t noticed before. Everything here was clean, or as clean as concrete and asphalt could be. It was still a city, but I hadn’t noticed the difference between this sliver of protected space and the place I had come from just a couple hours ago. No garbage lined the sidewalks. No broken storefronts spilled their glass. Above me on all sides stood magnificent buildings, places where the rich lived and played, forgetting those of us down below.
“I’ll be up there,” the boy behind me said. “Soon enough.”
He had been watching me. He elbowed me conspiratorially.
“Maybe you, too, Pink,” he said. “Maybe we could save on some rent, you and me.”
Jason Morrow
Designation: Green
My cheeks flushed red as he used the nickname Alex had adopted for me after I had dyed my hair. Alex had made it funny. This guy used it as a jab.
I pulled my hood up over my hair more tightly, wishing more than ever that I had never changed it in the first place. I crossed my arms, trying in vain to make myself look insignificant, and turned away from him.
By ten we had come all the way around to the door of the recruitment center. In the empty area in front of the building there was a strange statue. It depicted a man holding several rings above his head. They interconnected, making a hollow sphere above him. It made me think of a man shouldering the weight of a planet. Maybe its message was meant for us recruits. That if we made it out of this place with a stiff shirt and a flag patch, it would then fall to us to hold up the world.
I turned back to stare at the cathedral once more, suddenly hungry for its ornate carvings and promises of a god above.
It might have been easier if that were the life I had been brought into. If all of us were believers now.
I turned my back to it one final time, choosing instead to carry the weight of my future all on my own.
The front hall was huge and ornate, and I found myself gazing up into the ceiling with my mouth hanging open. I had been expecting something drab and gray, not such a grand place for us to enter the Service through. It was one last carrot to dangle in front of our noses before we officially signed our lives away. “This could be yours,” the walls whispered.
Two giant escalators rose up beneath the grand ceiling, but neither of them were operating. We each moved up, step by step through the line.
Several tables were lined up at the top, each with a sign indicating which one you should go to based on the first letter of your last name. I approached the table labeled S-U and waited to be recognized.
“Name,” the attendant droned. She wore a camouflage uniform, and her black hair was slicked into a tight bun at the back of her head.
“Riley Taylor,” I said, my voice coming out more softly than I had intended.
The attendant looked over her nose at me, scanning my appearance with a smirk.
She made a note in her computer and handed me a tablet and stylus.
“You can take this over there,” she said, motioning to a group of chairs on the other end of the room. “When you’re done, take it over to the main line.” She pointed to the line of recruits on the other side of the open door, their applications presumably completed.
“Ok,” I whispered. Then louder, “Thanks.”
I backed away.
A few empty chairs dotted the room, and I found my way to the one closest, taking care to settle myself into it as quickly and quietly as I could. I ducked my head as if I were filling out the form, but my eyes were up, scanning the room.
My breath quickened as no fewer than ten Oranges blinked across my lens. What had they done? Stolen things? Hurt people? Murdered? I tried to force my heart to quit hammering in my chest. I took a deep breath and looked down at the tablet.
Name:
Riley Taylor
Next of Kin:
I hesitated. I didn’t know what to put for that. I guess, technically, that would be my mom. Did I want her notified if I died? I couldn’t really decide. What would that mean for the money, if there was any? Would my earnings go to her? The dark and injured person inside me rose up and shouted NO in my head.
I left it blank.
Birthdate:
March 15, 2074
Address:
I hesitated again. If I never intended on going home again, was that still my address?
I moved down the form. It asked questions about schooling, arrests, interests. I tried to imagine what an Orange would put under “interests.” Then again, I
didn’t have much to put in that category, myself. Most of my interests had revolved around stealing credits from the grocery stipend to break out of Brooklyn. But I didn’t think somehow that “escape” would be the type of answer they were looking for on a form like this. I went with something safe.
Science
Next was health.
Have you ever had surgery?
No
Have you ever had HIV, measles, staph…?
No
No
No
Have you ever broken a bone?
I paused. Yes, I had broken a bone. My right hand moved instantly to my thigh, rubbing it absently. I thought hard.
Had I ever broken another, less essential bone?
Yes
Type:
Finger
It wasn’t a lie. I had broken my finger once when I was little. I had been running down the stairs in our building and lost my footing, landing with a smash against my left hand.
I pushed down the feeling of shame that came from hiding the more pertinent information. It wasn’t a lie, my broken finger, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either.
I hurried through the rest of the form, finally reaching the last question.
Why do you want to join the Service?
Why did anybody want to join the Service? The Oranges, to clear their arrest history. The Reds, to serve their time. The Greens? I doubted there were many of us here to fulfill our patriotic duty.
I knew the reason why I was here, of course, but what about them? To get away, I thought. From someone. Something. Someplace. To find that mystical future full of money and ease. But how much should I say? Did they really want the truth?
No, I decided, they did not.
I echoed the video I had watched earlier that morning as I typed.
To fight for my country, and my future.
Chapter Five
PROCEED TO ROOM B.
The message on the tablet flashed when I had completed the form.
My hands shook as I walked to the door. I noticed with a start that the Orange I had seen on the train, Lydia had been her name, was just entering the room. She paused, sneering and folding her arms to block my path out of the room. I paused, too, but only slightly. I was just going to have to get used to being around so many Oranges, no matter how dangerous they might be. Half of the people I was going to meet in the next few days would hold the designation. And there would be Reds, too, though they were separated from us now. I couldn’t run from all of them.
The stylus I had used to fill out the form rattled against the tablet, and I fought hard to keep it still.
I approached the door, but she didn’t move. I could try to squeeze past her, but I imagined her thrusting me up against the wall if I did. Instead, I hardened my face, tightened my shoulders and nudged her hard as I pushed by.
It happened in an instant. She flipped the hood of my sweatshirt off my head and grabbed onto a fat lock of my bubblegum pink hair, yanking my head back as she did so.
“You should really look where you’re going, Pink,” she snarled.
That name again.
I fought her, trying to get away, but the hold she had on me was painful, and I was acutely aware of laughter coming from within the room.
I suddenly understood something I hadn’t that morning, and all the mornings before. The choice to join the Service meant more than being subservient to the leader of a squad. I knew that already. But it also meant being subservient to the Oranges, and probably the Reds, too. The fear us Greens had for them was on nearly every face as they watched Lydia and me, and it seemed the rest of the Oranges could smell our nervousness.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two other Oranges get up from their seats to push a couple Greens out of their chairs. Some were slapped playfully, an invitation to fight. Others rose to the challenge and were soon outright brawling.
Why?
Lydia snickered as I fought her off. I ducked my head to try to wriggle it free, but she had my hair by two hands now. I rammed her into the backside of the door with my head, and she laughed again.
“What, you don’t like your new name?” she asked. “How could you expect to be called anything else? What’s your real name? Riley? Well, you might have considered a less ridiculous mop of hair before joining the Service.”
I shoved her again. I wondered where the guards were. Weren’t they stationed inside this room just as outside it? I hadn’t noticed when I had taken my tablet from the woman behind the desk.
Maybe it’s jealousy. Too many years in a designation that kept them on the fringes.
“I’m tired of all you Greens,” she said. “You think you know so much. You think that you’re superior to the rest of us.”
She pulled with both hands and shook my head back and forth so hard I thought I would be sick. For a few long moments I couldn’t figure out how to fight her. Then I realized that she had left herself wide open with both hands on my head. With all the force I could manage, I began pummeling her in the gut with my fists.
At first, more laughter, but soon I had landed a good jab or two, and her fun stopped. She thrust my head away from her and punched me squarely in the jaw.
I hit the marble floor, barely catching my fall enough to protect my head. I was vaguely aware of armed guards entering the room. The whole place seemed to be in an uproar of violence, Orange on Green, a lifetime of dismissal from society to pay back. It didn’t matter that these Greens had never done anything to them. We were part of the group that had. The group that held them back from any opportunity for a normal life.
Lydia walked over until she was staring down at me. Her figure swam in my vision. I raised one pathetic hand up, a gesture of protection.
Please stop.
She had one arm placed protectively around her midsection. So I had gotten a good shot in, then.
“You’d better watch yourself, little Pink,” she snarled.
She spit, the spray covering my face and hands, then walked casually away, finding her place among the tables, A-E, as if the fighting had never occurred at all.
As I turned over to push myself up, it was not lost on me that no one—not a single worker, not a single Green, and certainly not any of the Oranges—no one had stepped forward to help me.
I stared around at the group. The Oranges were all heaving with effort. A few had backed off from a blow from the batons the soldiers wore.
Nobody watched me scramble upward. I wiped her spit off my face with the back of my sweatshirt sleeve.
I understood who was in charge now.
I raised my hood and clenched my fists as I walked out the door.
Alex.
As I exited the room, I saw him enter the enormous lobby. Relief flooded through me, and I nearly ran to him. But then I saw one of the guards on either side of the front door grip his firearm tighter than before as he watched me approach. Maybe he thought it was him I was coming for. As I came face to face with Alex, the man relaxed his grip.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I said, not even bothering to argue that I wanted him to stay somewhere else, somewhere safe. I didn’t want either of us to be in the place where the question “Next of Kin” was the second one on the list.
I fought back tears. The awe I had felt from the building’s opulence earlier had completely evaporated now. Between the odd questions on the tablet and the attack from the Orange, I felt completely turned around.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I told you I wanted you to stay behind. What happened to your face?”
He brushed a blood slicked strand of hair away from my forehead.
“What?” I asked.
He put one finger up against my lips and it came away bloody. I hadn’t even noticed.
“Who did this to you?” he asked.
He put one hand on my shoulder and looked around as if searching for some unknown threat. I realized he must be seeing all the Oranges in the place, like I had.
“It was nothing,” I lied. “Just stay away from the Oranges.”
He sighed.
I took a deep breath and held it, trying to keep calm. I hadn’t expected to want to hold him, to wrap my arms around his middle and bury my face in his chest.
“I didn’t think you’d actually come,” he said
“You knew I’d come.” I let out my breath. “Where else could I have gone?”
My lens flashed ORANGE, ORANGE, ORANGE. In the past hour I’d been around more criminals than I had been in my entire life. I looked up at Alex, suddenly feeling resolved. I stood up straighter, ignoring the twang in my leg. I looked down at the tablet and then up toward the sign over Room B.
“I gotta go,” I said, apologetic.
“No,” he said, pulling me by the arm off to the side of the room. “I don’t want you in the Service and you know it. We’ve had this conversation before, Riley.”
“Well, I don’t want you joining, either,” I said. “But what choice do you have? What choice do I?”
“Just wait for me,” he said. “Just one year and I can get you a place. Or us a place.”
He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, clearly embarrassed.
One year.
So many things could happen in just one year. He could be dead well before the end of it. So could I.
I couldn’t make that gamble, to simply wait and hope for his survival. I was going in.
“You know I have to go,” I said, fixing my eyes on his. “Would you stay? If it were me asking?”
He looked away.
“No,” I guessed.
I gripped my tablet resolutely.
“I’ll see you on the other side.”
I gave him a quick hug, trying not to hold on for too long, and before he could lock me in his arms, I was pulling away. I dashed into Room B before he had a chance to stop me.