The Designate

by J B Cantwell

  Riley M.

  459-34-2988

  O POS

  None

  “Welcome to the Service, recruit,” the man said.

  I looked up at him, and in his eyes I saw the combination of pride and guilt. Maybe he cared about the wars our nation fought. Or maybe he knew, just as I did, that my life now hung in the balance.

  I turned from him, my boots grinding into the pink hair on the floor, and walked out the door.

  Episode 2

  Chapter One

  I followed the line down the dimly lit staircase, a pile of tightly folded clothing and sheets in my arms. The doorway at the bottom of the stairs opened into a large room with fifty sleeping cots filling the floor.

  “Find a cot, recruits!” yelled some man I didn’t know. I started when I realized I could see his designation.

  Sergeant Jeremy Holt

  Designation: Silver

  “Into your uniforms. Chow is at 1800 hours through that door.” He pointed to one side of the room. A large digital clock hung over the door. 1730.

  “You have half an hour. Anyone needing the bathroom …” His arm pointed in the other direction.

  Then he turned and left us all standing there, most of us unsure of what to do, even though he had just told us. Nobody spoke, not even the Reds, who I knew were among our numbers. For them, this was as new and trepidatious as it was for the Greens. The Oranges, though they had done this before, weren’t talking either.

  It was a bad sign.

  We were deep within the recruitment building. No natural light made its way here, and the green of fluorescents glowed overhead as we made our beds. We were all mixed in together, men and women, or boys and girls if you counted the youngest of us. It didn’t matter; we were wide-eyed, all.

  We had been stripped of our belongings before we were issued our fatigues. I handed over the stack of cards with all the credits I had accumulated. They were useless to me now, and if I made it through the next three years, they wouldn’t be so valuable at all anymore. An afterthought compared to the money I would be awarded at the end. I tried to comfort myself in this fact. I would win. I would survive. I would be so wealthy, so free, that I’d be able to forget about the money lost.

  Once dressed, we were to give our civilian clothing to the sergeants as well. Everything would be stored for us upon our return. I wondered what would happen to our things if we didn’t make it back. Maybe my imitation army boots and hooded sweatshirt would wind up at the burning plant, along with all the other long forgotten possessions. Or maybe the nine hundred credits I had amassed over the past two years would find their way to Alex, the only point of contact I had listed on my intake sheets.

  I found a cot along the outer edge of the room and put my fatigues down, looking around. I was angry, but mostly terrified when a bald Lydia chose a cot two down from mine. She looked up, smirking, but did not break the silence that filled the room.

  I headed toward the bathroom, heart pounding, but not surprised to find that it was unisex. I used the toilet and then washed my hands at the mirror. As a few boys and another girl moved past behind me, I looked hard at my new reflection. A large bruise was developing along the left side of my face, and my lip was cracked. My face seemed so foreign, so alien. The features must have been the same as they had been a few hours ago, and yet now they seemed stretched, as if losing my hair had pulled the skin taught against my scalp.

  This was just how it needed to be, I told myself. This was my ticket home, to a real home that I could make for myself. A life that was starkly different from the one I had been living for the past ten years.

  A loud smack against the wall made me jump, and Lydia entered the bathroom.

  “Missing your tresses, Pink?” she asked as she walked toward the toilet.

  I turned and faced her.

  For the first time I was glad for the lack of designation reading in my lens. For years I had been conditioned to fear an Orange reading, but looking at her now I found her far less threatening than she had been at first.

  “What is your problem?” I asked.

  She stopped and turned to me.

  “I just don’t like you,” she snarled. “You’re too … clean for a place like this. Too sweet and innocent. You’ll drag us down.”

  “And what,” I said. “You’ll become some sort of military captain with all your hidden talents?”

  My heart was hammering, but I pushed on.

  “I won’t drag the group down any more than any of us,” I said, pointing to the cots just outside the door. “And besides, I have no reason to believe you. I’ve seen you’re an Orange. That means you’ve made it through a tour. Well, good on you. Maybe you should spend your time trying to teach the rest of us how this is supposed to work instead of walking around making snide remarks.”

  I pushed by her on my way out of the bathroom, and this time she didn’t attack me. Maybe because there was no hair to pull me back by. Or maybe because there were strict rules about recruit on recruit fights; no one was allowed to fight once we had been accepted into the Service. Every walking body could find a use here, one way or another, and to injure a fellow recruit, another soldier that could be used as the force against the enemy, was sacrilege.

  So I held my head high as I left the bathroom, and though I could feel her anger behind my back, I assured myself that violence would not come my way.

  It wasn’t until dinner that people started talking. I took my tray to an empty table, unsure of where to sit. I had felt a rush of adrenaline after telling off Lydia, but it was fading away now as I scanned the crowd. I had been brave, braver than I thought I could be against someone like her. But if it was such a surprise that I had found the nerve to talk to her like that, would I find that same bravery to face an enemy in combat?

  A few moments later, another tray was slammed down onto the table next to mine. I looked up and found a girl, thin as a wisp and covered from head to toe in tattoos. She climbed onto the bench beside me.

  Hannah Murphy

  Designation: Unknown

  “I’m Hannah,” she said. Already she had a spoonful of mash in her hand.

  I sat still for a moment, surprised. The girl looked up at me, irritation clear on her face.

  “I’m—Riley,” I said.

  She made a hissing sound through her teeth.

  “No, you’re not,” she argued. “You’re Pink. That’s what they’re all calling you. Something about … the hair?”

  I stared down at my plate, fuming.

  “Come on now,” she said, taking a bite and grimacing at the taste. “You walk into a recruitment center with bubble gum hair and think they’re gonna leave you alone?”

  I had. It was stupid of me. But I had.

  “Well, it’s gone now,” I said.

  Hannah snorted.

  “It ain’t. You’re as pink as a baby’s behind from the look of you.”

  “Then why are you sitting here?” I asked staring at my mash and gritting my teeth.

  “Oh, you know,” she said, elbowing me. “Checking out the competition. Let me guess,” she went on, shoveling more of her food into her mouth, “A Green from the slums, looking for a way out.”

  I looked up, frowning.

  “It’s all the same story,” she said, eyebrows raised.

  “Yeah, so what about you?”

  She lowered her spoon and brought her face next to mine conspiratorially.

  “Red,” she whispered.

  I tried to hide the gasp in my throat, but failed.

  Hannah laughed, spitting some of the mash out of her mouth as she did so.

  “You’ll believe anything, eh? Good to know.”

  “So you’re not Red?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?” she answered thickly. “Like I said, it’s all the same story.”

  I stared down at my tray. Hot mashed cereal filled up most of it, with two nutrition squares on the side for dessert. I picked up my fork and took a t
iny bite of the mash. Hannah’s face hadn’t lied; it was one level up from inedible. I washed the first bite down with a swig of water, grimacing at the texture it left in my throat on the way down.

  “There ya go, Pink,” she said, elbowing me again. “Down the hatch.”

  I stared around the room at the other recruits, most showing the same level of disgust at the meal as I had.

  “So, if you aren’t a Green, what happens next then?” I asked

  Hannah looked at me sideways, smirking. She put down her fork.

  “They load us up,” she said, turning to face me. Her eyes seemed to have lost a little bit of their sparkle compared to a few moments before. “The buses will leave in the morning. There’s no way out. From now on, you’re in whether you want to be or not. Then, when we get to the fort, we train.”

  “What do you mean there’s no way out?” I asked. “We haven’t even started yet.”

  “Oh, you don’t think we’ve started?”

  She looked around the room, her eyes falling on several different places in the ceiling where cameras hung low. Then she casually scratched the section of scalp behind her ear, right where her chip had been inserted.

  “Trust me,” she said, lowering her voice just slightly. “We’ve started.”

  Tracking. I guessed that following us by chips wasn’t enough for them. They had to watch our every move and listen to every word. Now that I thought about it, of course there would be the threat of terrorists joining the ranks, trying to unhinge the Service from the inside. But how a Black designate could make their way in, I had no idea.

  “But why?” I whispered.

  Hannah shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. My intentions are pure. Get the money and get out.”

  I stared at her for a moment. She was bouncy, almost excited. I looked around again at the cameras placed at intervals along the ceiling. I wouldn’t make it far if I concentrated on the fear clenching inside my gut. No one ever said that joining the Service was fun, and maybe I had believed that it would be somehow palatable, more interesting than dangerous.

  I put my head down and took another bite of mash.

  It was time to push fear aside.

  Chapter Two

  I’m not sure if anybody slept that night, even the Oranges. No matter how tough the men and women lying beside me appeared to be, the truth was that tomorrow we would be shipped off like cattle on the road to slaughter. And I hadn’t seen Alex once. I worried that he had left me, or that he had somehow failed to pass the recruitment. Or maybe his size and mind had been enough to move him forward, somehow ahead of the rest of us.

  I thought about the young men who had returned home after their first year in the Service. They had been big and bulky, their shirts pulled taught against their muscles. Maybe that would be Alex in a year. Maybe we wouldn’t be near each other at all until all was said and done.

  One by one, our breathing grew steady. The room was large enough to hold fifty people, though it was only half full tonight. I felt like I could hear every breath, every gasp, every tear that fell. These human noises echoed oddly against the cold, concrete walls. I tried to rest, to force my body to relax. But the many questions I had about this mad decision I had made kept swirling around in my head, clinging there, keeping sleep far away.

  There was no way to tell when the night gave way to day, but when the sun rose somewhere up above our cave, the lights flickered on and noise suddenly filled the room. The clock read 0600 on the wall.

  “On your feet, recruits!” shouted a man from the front of the room. It was Holt, the sergeant who had greeted us yesterday.

  I felt certain that I hadn’t slept at all, but I was groggy; maybe I had gotten an hour or two. I stumbled from my sheets and stood at the foot of the bed in my socks. Most of my roommates followed suit.

  The man was tall and wide, his dark skin contrasting starkly against the light green of his uniform. His black hair was cut short, not shaved, but so short and perfect it seemed almost vain compared to the uneven stubble that remained on my head.

  He walked down the rows, smacking a baton against the metal bars of the cots as he went.

  “I’m Sergeant Holt,” he bellowed, coming to stop at one of the few beds that was still occupied. He slammed his baton down on the foot of the bed, banging it relentlessly until the occupant finally woke and sat up, rubbing his eyes. “You,” he said to the boy. I recognized him as the Green who had been so nervous waiting in line during registration, the one who had been dancing back and forth with anticipation. “Come here. Come closer.” He beckoned to him with one finger, a sickening smile plastered to his face. I suddenly wanted to shout out. Or to cover my eyes. But I watched just as closely as everybody else in that room as the sergeant’s right fist collided with the young man’s cheek. The blow knocked him clean out of the bed and onto the floor.

  I felt sick to my stomach, and my breathing became quick and ragged as the sergeant approached my line of cots.

  BANG. BANG. BANG.

  The baton hit bed after bed. Some were already up and standing. Others were now scrambling to stand at attention before Holt got to their cot. He banged every bed he walked by, until he came to mine. He stopped and turned his head.

  “You’re the one,” he said, his voice low and threatening. “Pink, they say.”

  I frowned, but then, not knowing what else to do, I recalled the many times I had seen the meeting of sergeant and recruit in movies. I bellowed, “Yes, Sir!”

  He turned fully to face me then, standing half a head higher than my eyeline. I stared blankly into the embroidery on his uniform. SR. Jeremy Holt it read in black, solid letters.

  He must have seen me sprint out of bed when he had first walked into the room.

  “You might have a chance here, Pink!” he yelled to the room at large. His breath smelled like toothpaste.

  “Thank you, Sir!” I shouted, hoping that I was doing the whole thing right.

  He turned and walked away.

  “Now everyone listen carefully,” he shouted. “I will be your master for the next six weeks. I know for a fact that you’ll have everything you need to get on with the rest of us. When we get to camp, be ready to work.”

  He paused, looking around at his new group of recruits with disgust.

  “Chow at 0630,” he said, turning.

  As he exited the room, he let his baton fall again against every bed he passed, even those that stood empty.

  The whole room seemed to exhale as one the moment the door slammed behind him.

  I immediately stripped my bed and pulled my fatigues on over my underwear. Lydia stood across from me, her arms folded.

  I ignored her.

  Finally, she began to follow suit. Before she was done, I had my parcel of belongings packed neatly into the Service-issued backpack and headed for chow without a backward glance.

  We filed onto an old school bus that had been re-engineered to run on methane from the burning plants. The seats were worn and torn, and the whole interior smelled of gas. As I moved through the bus to find a spot, I noticed that one of the only ones available was beside the boy who had taken the beating this morning.

  Joshua Dane

  Designation: Unknown

  A welt had grown quickly along his left cheek. I noticed his hands shaking as he held his parcel in his lap.

  I slid into the seat next to him, trying to catch his eye.

  “Is it ok if I sit here?” I asked.

  He nodded, not looking up.

  “Thanks,” I said. “We do match and everything.”

  He turned at this and grimaced when he saw the bruise that had been forming on my cheek as well.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “We should have helped you. You know, when that Orange hit you yesterday.”

  I sat back into my seat.

  “You’re right.” It was all I could say. I hadn’t forgiven him, or any of them. But I did re
alize that everyone who hadn’t been fighting had kept their seats during my brawl with Lydia, not just him. I might’ve done the same if it had been me.

  “Guess we’re not allowed to sleep in, eh?” Hannah jumped into the seat in front of us and turned to lean over and talk. Her head gleamed white in the morning light. I guessed that her hair had been black before the barber had gotten his clippers on her.

  Joshua didn’t speak. He was a Green, just as I had been. I remembered seeing his designation before we had been stripped of the ability to read them.

  Hannah looked back and forth between the two of us.

  “What’s his deal?” she asked nodding toward him.

  “Nerves, I think,” I said

  “Aw, don’t worry Josh,” she said. “The fun is just about to start!”

  She looked like a kid in a seat on her way to a carnival. She was happy and weirdly excited, considering that the abuse we had seen this morning would likely continue once we got to our destination. She hopped back down into her seat and put her elbow up against the window.

  I looked down at my pack of clothing and bedding. It was all I had now. As the bus pulled out of the lot, I tilted my head back, staring at the ceiling, cracked and rusted.

  The bus moved up through a tunnel and made its way onto the streets of Manhattan. I stared out the window as I watched the huge buildings slip by.

  When I turned back again to Joshua, I noticed a single tear running down his face.

  “Hey,” I said, elbowing him.

  He looked up, but barely.

  “Knock it off.”

  I understood why he was crying. But I’d already become a target for the rest of the recruits to torment. I was already seen as weak, though I couldn’t quite figure out why. Maybe it was the remaining bruise from Lydia’s attack that had singled me out. She had positioned herself as the alpha. The others were just following her lead.

  I knew the danger he was putting himself in by showing weakness so early in the game.