by Ramona Finn
There weren’t going to be any more arguments. At least, not today.
Epilogue
The transparent billowing curtains threw orange and pink light across the room as the sun set in the distance. I walked out onto the balcony, taking in the stretch of greenery in front of our home. Several houses had begun appearing like pinpricks on the edge of the land, but otherwise, my family and I were secluded from the concrete jungle of the city.
I gripped the metal railing, leaning on it and testing my hand. I was fully healed from the fighting in New Manhattan, but the memory of the deep ache remained, and I was sure it always would. That day at the rally had changed my life, and the entire course of our country.
The only physical remnants were the scars on my body from all of the fights we had endured in efforts put toward creating that future.
“Lora,” a voice floated through the house.
“Coming!” I called. Having a place to call my own never ceased to surprise me. Each day, waking up in a place we called our own was enough to keep a smile on my face throughout my waking hours. With all of the hardships I’d endured, there were times when I’d wake after a nightmare reliving John’s death or any other fight which had taken place—I blamed my perfect memory for that—and I hoped that someday those nightmares would be replaced with an abundance of happy memories.
Walking back into the house, I drew in a breath of the fresh air. The bar at the edge of the living room had been Dad’s idea, as he had always wanted one. I grabbed a bottle of bubbly wine and several cups for the dinner Mom and I had been preparing all day. It was our first-year celebration of having the house and our freedom from BioPure.
As I walked to the back patio, I reminisced about what we had accomplished. I no longer pushed away from the influx of memories which bombarded my mind at times. My memory had been a gift from John, and even if I hadn’t had a perfect memory, I would have wanted to honor him somehow. My mind brought about the memory of him, and each day his death hurt a little less.
While he hadn’t been a part of Sledge’s takedown, he had helped shape a new society. It was Jarid who would help mold that society—starting in New York—which was going to need someone with a lot of patience to fix most if not all of the mistakes that BioPure and VaxWell had created in their search for domination.
That was his dream, while Syeth’s was to head out to New California, start a farmstead, live outside the pressures of society, and enjoy what we had fought so hard to create.
Jarid had asked me to stay with him to help out the cause in New York and advance the changes taking place. But I had other plans, and would walk a different path. With Syeth.
Walking outside, the scent of fresh pine after the overnight rainstorm hit me. I slowed, taking in the environment I never thought I’d love as much as I did.
Mom’s laughter tinkled along with the windchime, creating a lazy song in the air.
She and Dad sat at the table playing cards. Dad pumped his arms in the air and Mom laughed at his display of victory.
I smiled at them. Fully recovered, and better friends than ever, Mom and Dad had decided to come with Syeth and me to the farmstead. Dad had wanted to return to his roots and Mom had promised she’d never leave us again.
A pair of arms snaked around my waist and I leaned against Syeth, basking in his warmth and strength.
Syeth sneaking up on me brought up a memory from when we had been in the safehouse together after I had passed out from working so hard to pull the cure from my mind.
“I heard you, you know,” I said.
“Just now?”
“No,” I said. “In the safehouse. You brought me back to life when I thought all was lost. I didn’t know it was you until you called for me at the stadium after I’d shot Sledge.”
“I thought you forgot about that.” I tilted my head up to look at him. Pink had spread across his cheeks.
“I don’t forget much.”
“That’s right. Well, in any case, I hoped you would know it was me.” He kissed me and the forgotten bottle and cups rattled against each other in my hands. Laughing, he released me, taking the cups from me to bring them to the table while I followed with the bottle. Over the past year, I’d fallen more in love with Syeth than ever. We finally had what we both wanted, and there was no reason for us to be unhappy or restricted anymore.
I was ready for the life that Syeth had promised. A small one with him and my parents. Jarid and the others could finish the work that we’d started in New York and beyond. I had earned my chance for happiness.
End of The Unpaired
The Pairings Book Three
The Pairings, 6 November 2019
The Carrier, 8 January 2020
The Unpaired, 4 March 2020
PS: Do you enjoy YA dystopian? Then keep reading for an exclusive extract from The Culling.
About Ramona Finn
Ramona Finn writes about courageous characters who fight to live in broken, dystopian worlds. She grew up sitting cross-legged on her town's library floor - completely engrossed in science fiction books. It was always the futuristic world or the universe-on-the-brink-of-extinction plot lines that drew her in, but it was the brave characters who chose to fight back that kept her turning the pages.
Her books create deep, intricate worlds with bold characters determined to fight for their survival in their dystopian worlds - with a little help from their friends...
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BLURB
In a solar system where The Authority decides who lives and who dies, only one of their own executioners can stop them.
Glade Io is a trained killer. Marked at a young age as an individual with violent tendencies, she was taken from her family and groomed to be a Datapoint—a biotech-enabled analyst who carries out the Culling. She is designed to identify and destroy any potential humans that threaten the colonies: those marked as lawbreakers, unproductive or sick. But when she’s kidnapped by rogue colonists known as the Ferrymen, everything Glade thinks she knows about the colonies, and The Authority that runs them, collapses into doubt.
Pulled between two opposing sides, and with her family’s lives hanging in the balance, Glade is unsure of who to trust—and time is running out.
Grab your copy of The Culling from www.RamonaFinn.com
EXCERPT
Chapter One
Ten Years Later
~The Asteroid Belt~
I’ve always hated hide-and-seek.
But if you had to play it, like I did right now, so much better to be the hunter than the hunted.
I cracked my knuckles in front of me as I stepped into the simulator, and the door slammed behind me. I was instantly plunged into darkness – a blunt darkness, as can only happen indoors. Two points of light opened up in front of me, one on the left and one on the right.
I bared my teeth in a feral grin as my eyes bounced from one point of light to the other. They were throwing two colonies at me at once. I waited, tense and ready, as both points of light started spiraling open, focusing. They were forming not just into images, but into my new reality.
Within seconds, I was straddling the line between two worlds. I could see the images with my eyes, but when I closed them, I could see the images projected across my brain, as well. The computer implanted in my arm and head was cool like that. There was almost nothing I couldn’t do with it.
I scanned the two landscapes on eith
er side of me. Glacially icy on one side, offering all the blues and grays of an icy planet. And on the other side, the black sky met the umber sand of a red planet. I looked back and forth between them. Two colonies at once. I knew it was just a simulation, but still, a bead of sweat rolled down my back as I planted my feet on the floor of the simulator.
Come out, come out, little citizens.
Using my computer, my integrated tech, I zoomed in on the icy landscape first. I felt the frigid wind, the brisk scent of ozone filling my nostrils, and soon I was close enough to see the roofs of dwellings. And yup. There the people were. I ignored the heavy furs that covered all but their eyes. I ignored their varying heights and weights. I ignored the way some of them held hands or rode on one another’s backs. I ignored the laughter that rang out from a group of citizens who had to be just about my age. I ignored the familiar admonishing tone of a mother at her wit’s end. The only thing I saw were the reddish glows that emanated from each person’s brainwaves.
The integrated tech computer that had been implanted when I’d been chosen for this job was designed to detect brain patterns. The computer in my brain could see other people’s brainwaves, and it presented the information in a way that allowed my eyes to see it, too. It had taken a long time to get used to it. But now it was almost like second nature. I let the reddish blurs around each person’s head remain just that – blurry.
Shifting my attention to the red planet now, I gave my eyes a second to adjust from the blinding white of the ice planet to the burnished, sunburned bake of the second colony. The black sky was a rich dark, the kind of black that had depth. With the Milky Way splashed across the skyroof of the red planet, I gave my eyes a second to adjust as my tech zoomed in on the colony, the red planet rushing past in my periphery. Soon we were there. The thick canvas tents that the citizens used as dwellings flapped in the constant, stinging wind. Each person wore white garments to reflect heat, but they were all dyed a deep, dusty pink from the red sand being flung in every direction.
This was a busier colony than the ice planet. People bustled past one another, balancing baskets of wares on their heads. The streets were narrow and craggy, lined with red rock walls that gave way to the canvas dwellings that stood every ten feet or so. So little of this planet was hospitable that the people had to live on top of one another like bees in a hive. The simulation raced me down one twisting street and to the next, so that I was coasting past grannies in doorways who were sorting seeds into one basket or another. Past children huddled around a game of skipping rocks on the ground. Past a ratty dog, everything but his eyes covered in red grit.
And then I landed in the main square. A place I’d only seen photographs of in the past.
People haggled over prices in the canvas booths that lined the square. Eggs and bread were traded and bartered. A group of unwatched children ran screaming from one end of the square to the other, adults scowling after them. A line of people 800 feet long wrapped around the square. Everyone held empty chalices. It was the line for water. A group of citizens shouted over one another as they crowded around a small wooden platform where an ox stood. The animal’s age was shown in its milky eyes and swollen joints, but still, the farmers shouted and scrapped for the auctioneer’s attention. On a planet as hard to farm as this one, any help was highly sought after.
I pulled my attention from the details of the two worlds and back to the task at hand. This wasn’t a sightseeing simulation. I was a trained Datapoint. This was my job.
This was a Culling.
Using every bit of training that had been pounded into me over the last two years, I began to block out all of the sensory details of the two colonies on either side of me. The slate gray clouds and the pale icy sun melted away on my left. On my right, the baked red became nothing more than a neutral background. Like I had a hand gripping a knob on a radio, I guided my integrated tech into turning the volume down. The noises of the market on one side muted, and the noises of the children playing on the other side did the same.
Soon, all I was left with were the citizens and the halos of red around their heads. I brought each red blur even further into focus. Starting with one alone and then moving to each citizen individually, I read their brainwaves with practiced ease.
My integrated technology and my brain worked in perfect, synchronized tandem as I identified the citizens I was looking for. In the simulation, they were scattered about, as they’d be in their worlds. But in my mind’s eye, it was as if all of the citizens were standing neatly in a line before me. Using my technology to organize them, I saw about a quarter of the citizens stepping forward. These were the ones I was about to cull. The ones with brainwaves indicating violence and aggression. The ones with the capacity to commit murder. The ones who were inclined to bring down pain on the citizens around them.
There were hundreds of citizens about to be culled, and another bead of sweat traced down my spine. This was almost as many as I’d culled in the last simulation, and I’d ended up in the infirmary for two days after the strain of that Culling. And I still hadn’t even readied the icy planet yet.
Sure, it would be easier to cull them in groups. Do a hundred here or a hundred there. But that wasn’t what this simulation was for. This was mass culling.
I could almost hear Haven’s voice in my ear. “Push yourself, Glade. You have the capacity for greatness. Yet it’s almost like you’re trying to blend in.”
I took a deep breath and turned my attention to the next planet, zooming in on each citizen’s brainwaves, pulling forward all the ones to be culled.
Between the two colonies, there had to be at least a thousand that needed to be culled. My vision blurred and I realized I’d stopped breathing. The way I would if I were lifting something heavy. I felt my brain stuttering as I attempted to combine the culling groups from the two colonies. It didn’t matter that they were across the galaxy from one another. It didn’t matter that I was attempting to separate each citizen from the next, to cull some and not all. It didn’t matter that each citizen was moving about, talking and laughing and pulsing. I had to cull all at once, and with vicious accuracy.
Within the simulator, my knees trembled. My hands clenched open and closed and, for a horrifying second, I lost grip on my tech and all the sensory stimuli flooded back in. Red dust and jutting glaciers of ice. Children playing, women hugging, the dusty dog digging in a pile of refuse.
No!
My brain wove itself into the integrated tech and took control again, zooming in on the citizens waiting to be culled. I ignored the faces, and I ignored the voices – all I saw were the reddish blurs of their brainwaves.
Ruthlessly separating them in my mind, I realized my mistake. I was going too slowly. I’d never been a long-distance runner. I was a sprinter. My knees shook again and I knew that I wasn’t going to make it more than ten or fifteen more seconds before I collapsed and ended up in the infirmary again; my brain couldn’t take the strain.
My vision blurred as I huffed air in and out of my lungs. I was losing the groups. The culled were mixing in with the regular citizens. I couldn’t hold the line. Couldn’t tell the difference. With my heart stuttering in my chest, the computer in my arm felt foreign and angrily sharp. I was failing. I was failing again.
Clarity raged within me even as every single brainwave of every single citizen melted into the next. Their brain patterns were a single, cacophonous blur.
I gripped the sides of my own head and screamed into the strain of it. It was useless. I was too exhausted to distinguish them.
Mass Culling.
I could all but feel the breath of Jan Ernst Haven in my ear. Mass Culling.
Individuals didn’t matter.
The red blur of their pulsing brains seemed to cloud around me, bearing down on me. They were so close. Everywhere. I lifted one hand in the air – the arm where my integrated tech had been implanted. My brain warred for dominance with the computer that had been implanted in me. The integra
ted tech strained, searching for just the cullable citizens. My own brain strained for silence, for this to be over. I felt the familiar feeling of my tech’s grip on the brainwaves of a citizen. I always visualized a hand gripping a giant plug. This was bigger than any plug I’d ever pulled before. But there was no looking back now. The red of each citizen was about to collapse on me. I couldn’t hold them all. It was me or them.
My brain and my tech synchronized and, in one crystal clear moment, we, as one, yanked the red brainwaves together. The citizens, such a large group, resisted at first. Pulling one citizen’s brainwaves was easy. It was like plucking a hair from a head. But pulling thousands at once was like yanking out a whole handful of hair.
But my brain was strong. And so was my tech. With a scream like a warrior, I gritted my teeth and gave a final yank. I felt the brainwaves come loose from each citizen, blinking instantly into blackness. Into silence. My tech immediately stopped blocking my senses. And there were the two colonies. One icy and gray-blue. The other baked red and blistering hot. Both of them silent as a tomb. And not a brainwave to be found.
I sighed as soon as the door to the simulator creaked open. I knew exactly who was standing on the other side and I knew exactly what he was going to say.
“You’ve got to be joking, Glade.”
Apparently, he always thought I was joking. I merely raised an eyebrow at Dahn as I pushed past him, out of the simulator and into the training room. Everything was gray metal and brown upholstery – even the command chair where Dahn had just been sitting. For one brief second, I thought wistfully of the two gorgeous landscapes he’d just shown me in the simulator. And then I thought of the vacuous silence I’d left in each of them. I shoved that thought away.