Extraction (19 page)

Sam’s eyes narrow. He digs his nails into my back—I cry out—and pulls away, leaving me sickened and trembling against the wall.

A young man stands in the doorway, his muscles showing through his dark leather suit. He looks older than me, but not more than twenty-two or twenty-three. His black hair is tinted green.

His eyes lock with mine, and all the color drains from his face.

“You…” he says.

I’ve never seen him before in my life. He moves toward me abruptly. I make a noise and press against the wall, but there’s nowhere to go.

He hesitates. “You’re not…”

“Not what?” I ask when he doesn’t finish.

He sighs and rubs his temple. “Sorry. I mistook you for someone.”

“And they say you’re smart,” Sam says.

The boy turns to him with narrowed eyes. “What the vrux were you thinking?”

Sam crosses his arms, but he doesn’t answer. If he thinks refusing to speak makes him superior or clever, he is wrong.

Oliver stumbles toward me out of the flashing lights, Ariadne two steps behind him. “Are you okay?” he asks. “I’m sorry, I tried to get back in.”

I still feel Sam’s nails in my back, his fingers trailing across my skin, his breath in my face. Worse, I feel the Surface official’s grimy hands ripping through my dress. I want to drown myself in shower water until the memories go away. I want to throw a knife, or maybe ten knives, at Sam’s face.

“I’m going to kill him,” I say.

Oliver shoots Sam a dirty look. “You won’t have to do it alone.”

I wipe the moisture out of the corner of my eyes and reach a shaking hand behind my back to pull up the zipper, but Ariadne moves my hand away. Her fingers zip me up, closing the path to my skin. She brushes the curls off my neck.

“I asked you a question,” the boy in the doorway snaps.

“It’s none of your business.” Sam shoves past him, but the boy grabs hold of his arm and doesn’t let go. He’s stronger.

“What are you even doing here, huh?” Sam snaps. “Stalking me again?”

I wish I were stronger. I wish I could make him hurt.

The boy snorts. “You’re paranoid. I wanted to check if you beat my score.” He glances at the hologram and smiles. “Ah, you did, by two points.”

He must be Beechy, the one in third place.

“But wait,” he says. “Someone beat
your
score? Who’s Clementine?”

I swallow. “Me,” I say.

Beechy looks at me. Recognition flits through his eyes again—it looks almost painful this time. I don’t understand it.

“Ah,” he says, looking away from me. “Jealous, as always. You really need to work on that, Sam. Fight the insecurities, and maybe some good will come of it.”

Sam wrenches away from him and makes for the door.

Oliver’s nostrils flare. He’s in Sam’s way, but he doesn’t move aside to let him pass.

A fist flies, and there’s a crack.

Oliver is on the floor, clutching his arm. The glass slides shut and Sam disappears.

My heart might’ve stopped beating, but now it starts again, way too fast.

“Vrux.” Beechy moves to Oliver.

I can’t move, and then I move without thinking, stumbling to drop to my knees beside my wounded friend. Ariadne follows, holding on to me.

Beechy tries to touch Oliver’s arm, but Oliver pulls back. Tears trickle down his cheeks, and my throat clenches. This is my fault. If I hadn’t beaten the test earlier, Sam wouldn’t have been mad and asked us to play Phantom in the first place. Or if I hadn’t been stupid enough to stay with him afterward, if I’d just
run
, this wouldn’t have happened.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should’ve listened.”

“No, it’s not your fault.” He shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have left you alone with him, I really shouldn’t have.”

“Shh.” I squeeze his sweaty palm.

“And you?” Beechy says to me in a hard voice. “Did Sam touch you?”

A stone fills my throat, making it hard to swallow. In the way Beechy means, he almost did. He made me think of that other time, which I’d tried to forget, but now I can’t. I can’t forget the roughness, the weakness, the fear, and how safe I felt when Logan finally found me and buried me in his warmth again.

“He was going to,” I say.

Beechy presses his lips into a line. “I thought so.” He keeps looking at me, and I think he’s going to say something else, but he doesn’t. He turns back to Oliver. “Come on, let’s get you to a doctor.”

Oliver protests, but Beechy ignores him. He eases his arms under his body and lifts him up, then sets him carefully on his feet but doesn’t let go of his good arm.

I stand and clench my fists at my sides. Stop shaking, I tell my body.
Stop it
.

Oliver is shaking too. His face is ashen, and I wish I could do something to make him better.

“Let’s go,” Beechy says, glancing at me again.

Ariadne tugs on my arm, and I lean on her and limp out of Phantom, following Beechy and Oliver.

*   *   *

We pass through Slumber Division to reach the health ward. It sits below the Nourishment Division cafeteria and above Restricted Division, the part of the Core where only Developers and high-classified personnel are allowed to go.

I lean against the wall of the elevator between Ariadne and Oliver, who clutches his arm and breathes heavily.

I glance at Beechy. His eyes shift away from me. “So who are you?” I ask.

He smiles. “Right. Sorry. I’m Beechy, mechanical engineer. I fly ships and teach people how to fly them.” He offers a hand.

I take it and force a smile. “Clementine. This is Oliver, and that’s Ariadne.”

“You’re a pilot?” Oliver asks, his voice a bit hoarse.

“Mhm.”

“Could you teach me?”

Beechy chuckles as the elevator dings and the door zips open. “Let’s get your arm better first. Then we’ll see.”

We step out into the health ward lobby. Beechy goes to the desk to talk to the receptionist, while we sit in the waiting chairs.

A couple minutes later, a nurse arrives with a tablet in hand. “What happened to you three?” She eyes our muddy figures.

“Phantom.” I grip Oliver’s arm to steady him as he stands.

The nurse glances at him and then at me, her forehead creasing. “Which one of you got hurt?”

“Both of them,” Beechy says.

“No, just him.” I wipe dried blood off my forehead. The back of my head hurts, but I don’t have dizziness, amnesia, or fatigue, so I don’t think I got a concussion. Anyway, Oliver’s arm needs more attention.

The nurse makes a tsk sound and gestures for us to follow her. She leads us into a small, round examination room just down the hall.

“You.” She points at me. “Wash that blood off in the sink.” She turns to Oliver and looks him over carefully. “You’ll need a steam-clean. It’s just through there.” She points at a sliding door in the wall that’s not the one we came through.

Oliver looks like he swallowed something sour.

“It won’t hurt, dear,” the nurse says, giving him a light pat on the shoulder. “One of your friends can help you walk in there and wait just outside, if that makes you feel better. You can keep your clothes on.”

He looks over to me. I shift my weight to my injured leg in order to walk. Pain shoots up my calf muscle. I muffle my cry with a cough.

“I’ll go,” Ariadne says.

Oliver takes a shuddering breath and winces, but lets her help him walk. They move through the sliding door, and they’re gone.

“A physician will be here shortly,” the nurse says to me and Beechy, and leaves the way we came in.

The smell of antiseptic makes my stomach sick. I grit my teeth and wrap my arms around my waist.

In the silence, Sam is in my head again. Sam’s hips pressed against mine in that way that was
wrong
. Sam’s fingers skimming the small of my back. Sam’s lips too close to mine.

My eyes seek Beechy, for a distraction. He’s watching me again. His eyes are the color of sunlight in the breaking moments of the day, before the stars hide.

“You think you can manage without me?” he asks.

“Yes.” He probably means with Oliver, but I mean the next time I face Sam. I’ll have to manage alone. I’ll have to get stronger, somehow.

Beechy nods. “Good.”

I look at my feet.
Good,
I think.

I wet my lips and turn to go to the sink, but I stop because he’s still looking at me. A crease appears between his brows.

He takes a step toward me and brushes my upper lip with two fingers. I flinch away from them, but his hand follows.

“You should clean this off,” he says. “It might bruise.”

“I don’t mind bruises.”

His lip twitches into a smile. “I’m not surprised.” His hand drops away.

“See you,” he whispers. The main door slides shut behind him.

I stare after him. I swallow.

The other door opens, and I jump.

Ariadne leads Oliver back into the room. He’s not muddy anymore, but the pain is heavier in his face, in the way he struggles to breathe. Ariadne helps him into the examination chair. I squeeze my arm with a hand, fighting the urge to help him too. I’m afraid it’ll hurt my leg.

When Ariadne finishes helping him, she brushes the hair out of her eyes and sits in a chair beside the sink, to the right of Oliver.

“Does it hurt a lot?” I ask him.

“Not bad,” he says, but he doesn’t let me see his eyes.

The main door zips back open.

Dim blue light casts shadows on the doctor’s face. She doesn’t say anything, but pauses a moment to let the door close. She snaps on gloves and leans over Oliver’s exposed arm and shoulder. Her hair is dark and her lips are a bright pink shade.

“Oh, sweetie.” She clicks her tongue and presses two spots on Oliver’s arm where a bruise is forming. He grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut. “Small fracture, I’d say. Did you fall in Phantom?”

I ease into the chair beside Ariadne. “He was attacked.”

She blinks at me behind her thick lashes. “By whom?” She moves to a silver cabinet.

Sweat trickles down Oliver’s forehead. “A boy named Sam,” he says.

The doctor laughs lightly. Her fingers snatch a syringe, a plastic dish, and a vial of cloudy blue liquid from the cabinet. “Sam who?”

I dig my nails into my thigh. I don’t want to have to use his title. “Lieutenant Sam,” I say stiffly.

“Ah, of course. Well, I’m sure he had a reason.” The doctor fills the syringe and drops the empty vial into the plastic dish. She moves to Oliver, whose face turns chalk white.

I stare at the doctor, at her slightly pursed lips. She knows who Sam is. He must not have been lying, then, about the kind of status he has here. He’s a brute and a bully, but Commander Charlie transferred him here early and gave him special rank in the military.
Why?

Commander Charlie must be like him. That’s the only logical reason.

The doctor wipes Oliver’s shoulder with a small patch of fabric and pushes the syringe’s four-inch needle into his skin. A strangled sound comes from his throat.

“This will ease the pain and help the bone heal faster,” she says, pulling the needle out and pressing a square of gauze over the spot. She drops the syringe into the sink and strips off her gloves. “I’ll be right back.”

The door slides shut behind her.

I need to breathe. It’s too hot in here. I push off my seat and limp past Ariadne to the sink. I run a fierce stream of water onto my hands and wipe the dried blood off my face.

“I feel so weak,” Oliver whispers. “All Sam did was punch me, and look at me. I’m way too weak.”

“You’re not weak,” I say, switching off the faucet. “We came here three days ago, and Sam’s been here for years. He’s stronger than you, but you’re smarter. You can get stronger.”

“I’m not sure I can.” Oliver runs his hand over his forehead. “They tried to kill me back in Crust, you know.”

“What?” Ariadne says.

“They did.” Oliver laughs a little, but it’s cold. It doesn’t sound right coming from him. “’Cause of my eyesight. I could still make out faces and coal and stuff at first, but it kept getting worse. I overheard the instructors talking about me at school. They were gonna send patrolmen to take me away in the middle of the night.” He pauses.

When he doesn’t continue, I say, “But they didn’t.”

He shakes his head. “They caught me disabling a cam-bot. I’d managed to hack into their security system. Guess they were impressed, or something. So they let me live.”

I smile to myself. That’s the sort of thing I always wanted to try when I was younger.

“What does that have to do with you not being strong, though?” I ask.

“Well, they told me I wasn’t,” he says. “They told me my genes weren’t built for physical work, but that I was smart enough so it wouldn’t matter. They pulled me out of the mines and made me an assistant in their security hub. They kept me away from the other kids, so I wouldn’t make friends or care about them. I was ten.”

My eyes widen. I’ve never heard of something like that happening before. Those under age sixteen in the outer sectors are never given special jobs—unless, it seems, they’re as smart as Oliver.

Or as brutal as Sam.

“They talked about letting me stay in the hub and just work there forever,” Oliver says quietly. “But they ended up deciding to transfer me here instead. Commander Charlie requested it.”

Oliver says it as if part of him wishes Commander Charlie hadn’t. Like he wishes he were back in Crust working in the security hub, where maybe he felt safe and happy even though most of the kids in that sector aren’t.

I think of Logan’s fingers lingering on my skin that last rainy day on the Surface, and I almost agree.

*   *   *

That night, I dream I’m trapped with Sam inside four glass walls. Logan stands outside, pounding on the glass, trying to break in. But he can’t get in, and I can’t get out. Sam presses the barrel of a copper against the skin between my eyes, and smiles.

I wake on the floor drenched in sweat, tangled in blankets.

Ariadne sits up in her bed, the covers pulled to her chin. “Are you okay?” she whispers. “You were screaming.”

My cheeks grow hot as I sit up. Did I
fall off
? “I’m fine.”