Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1) (29 page)

This is real. Krill is bleeding.

“Go get the gun!” Belgrade’s voice blasts in my ear.

Krill swallows thickly. He’s trying to say something. “Don’t…” he slurs. 

Don’t leave me,
he pleads. I know that’s what he wants to say, what he can’t finish.

“Keith, go!” Belgrade growls in my ear. “Go!”

I can’t. I can’t just leave him. I know he’d probably pick up a gun and shoot me if it were his life or mine, but I can’t just leave him here, worlds away from where he came from, to end alone. I can’t.

Krill’s mouth is flopping. He’s trying so hard to form words. But the shaking overtakes him, and all that comes out is a hard sound I can’t recognize as a word. The metallic warmth under my fingers is blood. Real blood, pumping his life away.

“
Keith,
” Belgrade’s voice is firm. I notice for the first time that there’s no hardness in it. “You need to run. Now.”

Krill’s hand flexes against his logger next to my knee. I can’t help but glance down at it.

Belgrade urges me to run again as I catch the numbers on the screen. There are four of us left…which means Krill has to make it to the meld.

“Forget the gun just go!”

“He’s loosening!” I cry.

“I know that!” Belgrade bellows back at me.

“He’s one of the four,” I plead. “He has to make it to the pad!”

“Forget the objective! Leave him! Now!”

I press harder, but the blood just keeps oozing out. He’s barely breathing now.

“Keith, this is the last time I’m going to tell you. Run!”

Krill’s eyes become vacant. I turn my head away, sobbing, and see a wall of shadows shifting behind us. Behind me.

It’s too late. Belgrade warned me. He told me to run. Now I’m too late.

Waiting for gunfire, I drop my head, close my eyes.

One shadow separates from the others.

“Get up, Keith. It’s over. You failed,” Belgrade says flatly, tearing his earpiece out and throwing it across the empty reaction center. The streets of Zone 1 have vanished. I am crouched down in weeds, my right hand urgently pressing against nothing more than mud.

Mud.

It wasn’t real. When we entered the reaction center for the final scenario, each of us had the same instructions. Listen to the commands of your facilitator and follow them, no matter what.

But it’s so unfair. They take us, raw and innocent, and expect us to become ruthless war machines in sixty days. They should realize after all they put us through that we’re really just a bunch of silvery-tattooed heroes. We should get medals just for surviving it. Instead, some of us get disposed for our trouble.

I don’t know what the others heard. I just know that several of us, more than the required four, are doing this walk of shame across the now empty reaction center. The others, successful, watch us silently from the safety of the concrete pad. 

Krill is there. To his credit, he’s not sneering at me, but his face holds something worse.

Pity.

He warned me, and I didn’t listen. Despite the lessons taught by my prior passes through the reaction center, all a series of trials that were only ever partly real, I ignored the real words of my facilitator in favor of the lies my senses told me.

I don’t think anything can save me now.

26

AFTER THAT FINAL scenario, Belgrade orders me to Respite. I hadn’t planned to bother, but, too late, I learn the lesson. So I obey. But the vials given to me by the Respite caretaker roll aimlessly on the shelf and clink against the back wall.

I
don’t sleep.  I weep silently on my rift, picturing Strega. Ritter. My parents. Shamu. That strange numbness is gone. I care. I care deeply. And I am so, so afraid for tomorrow.

The hours pass. I hear the others snoring softly. I don’t know whether they passed or failed, but I know they feel secure enough to sleep. Or drugged enough.  I know if I swallow the contents of the vials, I’ll sleep, too.

Ritter and Strega. I wonder what they’re thinking, whether they’re sleeping or getting drunk at one of the unwinds.  From their perspective, the hours must be just as impossible.

My leg throbs, reminding me I probably should ingest whatever waits in the vials. I should do anything possible to speed along the healing. Rebuild. I could be disposed of tomorrow. What would it be like to enter lawlessness already injured? 

I ease onto my right side, hoping to ease the pain in my left leg, but nothing helps. The pain in my heart is worse. I want Strega’s comfort so badly. I can almost feel his arms around me if I close my eyes.

I picture my parents.  I try not to think about them, but tonight there’s no escaping it. It’s impossible to picture them just going about their lives back on Attero. I know they must be half crazy, wondering where I am, what’s happened to me. It isn’t just Ritter I’ve worked so hard for…it’s them.

We take so much for granted. The air, the trees. Each other. I was so mean to my dad that last day on Attero. I can’t reconcile myself with who I was that day. How ridiculous I was, pitching a fit over having to move. Big deal. I’ve moved a dozen times, what’s one more?  I was about to go off to college, anyway. I was going to graduate from Touchstone with my peers. What the hell was I being such a baby about? If I hadn’t stormed off to that party, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

Whether they’ll ever know it or not, my Assimilation has been for them, too. I can’t just end with them never knowing what happened to me. If I assimilate successfully, I get to go on. And if I get to go on, there’s always a chance that someday, things might change. Attero might become an open world. If that happened, surely Concordia would change the rules about slivving. I might find my way back to them. Somehow.

I can’t think about where returning to them would leave Strega and me. I’m reminded that no matter what, I lose. I lose someone or something I love. I couldn’t ask him to follow me to Attero. His family is here. His life is here. His sophisticated medicine is here.

I check my logger a few times as the hours pass. At four a.m. I squint at the words on the vials. None say sleepbringer, so I don’t know which to avoid. Now that I’ve decided I need something to ease the pain, I can’t take anything. I don’t know which vial will knock me out.

We’re under orders to remain in the dormitory until we’re summoned.  What we don’t know is whether it’s straight to Tribunal or whether there will be stops along the way…to the cleanse, to Respite, to the public servettes. Not that I could eat, anyway. But I wouldn’t mind being clean and seeing if any of Respite’s potions can erase the pain while keeping me alert.

I watch my former teammates leave one by one and suspect with no small amount of dread that we’re called in order of rank. If that is so, I’m dead last. The only surprise is that once everyone else is gone, I’m alone with Stacy Brass. She’s the last person I expected to factor poorly.

When I’m called before she is, I wonder if I haven’t been wrong. I try to figure out what other order we might have been called in. Not alphabetically. Stacy would only be after me if we were called by the order of our first names. Hope sparks as I consider it, but then I realize that Melissa was called out before Enna and Delphi, so that’s not it, either.

Belgrade’s instructions, when they come, are to board the slide at 7:30 a.m. for the Tribunal hall. Until then, I’m free to do as I choose.

I choose to ask if I can have my logger back.

“You’ll receive your logger after your factors are read,” he says, and the screen of my temporary logger goes black.

I bite back a sob. I was really, really hoping to log Strega. I have to see him. This could be my last chance.

With that off the table, I choose to shower and visit Respite, where the caretakers are suddenly talking to us again.

My heart stutters a little in my chest as I open my eyes to find Sheila looking down at me with a concerned frown. My eyes fill. I clamp down hard on my jaw.

She places one cool hand on my forehead and says, “I’ll bet you could use something for pain.”

I nod.

She checks the gash on my thigh. “You’re trying to become infected,” she murmurs in dismay.

I swallow a groan as she spreads something creamy over it before closing the wound again and applying a long, narrow cling pack.

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“What time must you leave?”

“I have to be on the slide at 7:30,” I reply.

She rests her hand lightly on my forehead for a moment, reminding me of my mother again. “Rest. I’ll make sure you’re up in time.”

The Tribunal is nothing like last time. I guess with 2,986 people to factor through, there’s no time for a drawn out process of multiple breath analyses and coldly repeating my full name about a hundred times. I don’t even see Janat, Millick, and Danig.

Instead, I’m directed to a tiny room with a small viewer and barely enough space for Belgrade and I to stand next to one another. There’s no BAU, no breath analysis. There’s no sniffling audience in the back, but there
is
an ominous looking launch plate in the center of the floor.

Alone in the room, still waiting for Belgrade to arrive and deliver my factors, I can’t hold back the tears. I can’t look away from the shiny metal plate. I picture myself standing there, vanishing without a trace

Belgrade gives nothing away. He steps silently into the room, placing his Idix against a reader on the wall. He motions for me to do the same, forcing us to dance around each other in the ridiculously tiny stall. Before I return to my place, the viewer lights up with a highlight reel of the past two days, flashing through a series of combat sessions and clips from the scenarios, punctuated with plain screens that just show numbers. My exam scores. Surprisingly, there are also clips of me feeding Stacy Brass, my impassioned speech to the silent bodies in Respite, and my tearful refusal to abandon Krill as—I thought—he was ending.

Once it finishes, Belgrade emotionlessly delivers a series of numbers that mean nothing to me, followed by a brief statement.

“Candidate Keith is willful, obstinate, and opposes authority at every turn. She’s also creative, logical, and compassionate toward others. Her insubordination cannot be overlooked, but her value to Concordia should not be underestimated. Her rank is 1,040 in a class of 2,986.”

He then types something into a panel on the wall and exits the room without another word. The viewer goes blank.  When it lights again, it says only,
Stand by for final factor…

A light comes on over the plate and my heart stops.

Oh, no.

No.

The meld slides open behind me, and a woman dressed in Tribunal white enters. She squeezes past me to stand at the center of the plate.

“Davinney Keith?” she asks.

We’re back to full names. I am just one of 2,986 people she and her fellow Tribunal staff members must deal with today.

My voice sticks in my throat. “Yes?”

“Come this way,” she says, pointing to her feet. To the plate.

Oh, God.

She’s going to stand there until I join her and then she’s going to step off, and I will be disposed. I can’t get myself to move.

“Davinney Keith,” she repeats firmly, “Please.”

I step onto the plate, tears streaming. I’m too proud to beg, but not proud enough to keep from whimpering like a baby.

Before I even know what’s happening, something solid slams into me. But some part of me knows.

“Strega!” I scream, locking my arms around his solid, solid warmth.

He murmurs nonsense, his lips tucked close to my ear. I just sob, loudly, into his shoulder, convinced that at any second someone is going to pry us apart and launch me to the Disposal.

He tries to untangle himself from me, but I cling tightly. He insists, though, so I let him ease me back. That’s when I see Ritter behind him, looking relieved.

When he steps up and hugs me, I cling to him, too, for longer than he’d like. Only when I hear him whisper, “You did it!” do I fully understand this isn’t a goodbye. I’m not being disposed. I’m Concordian now. Born again, so to speak. At least in the eyes of the Tribunal.

When Ritter releases me, Strega kicks into caretaker mode, gently taking my right elbow.

“I need to get you to holding, look you over,” he says.

I don’t argue. Let him minister to me all he wants. I’m safe.
We’re
safe, I think, glancing at Ritter. 

I forgot about my bag, the one I carried into the proving grounds two days ago, but Ritter lifts it and says,

“I’ll meet you back at the keeping.”  He claps Strega’s shoulder and leans over to kiss my cheek. “Heal well,” he says, swiping my forehead.  I return the gesture and watch him disappear into the thickening crowd.

All around me, reunions like mine unfold. I smile up at Strega, and one corner of his mouth lifts as he watches me take it all in.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds. I know I’m expected to tackle Challenge next, to find out which functions I’m suited for. And there’s the matter of the suicides and the launch closures and the threat of Attero unleashing Supernova on us. On Concordia.

We have some decisions to make about how involved we want to get in the rebellion, in saving Attero from Concordia and Concordia from Attero. But not today.

It will keep. All of it.

It will have to, because suddenly I’m so weary I can barely stand. Strega feels it, somehow, through my elbow, and his arm slips around me.

“Come on,” he says tenderly. “I’ve got you.”

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