Extraction (3 page)

pew-pew

I twist my lips into a frown.

p-p-p-p-p-p

The sky flickers everywhere now like lines on the CorpoBots in the Pavilion, when their signal cuts out.

There’s a flash, and the shield vanishes from the sky.

The moon sits on the edge of Kiel, a brilliant globe. Oozing pink acid.

I can’t breathe anymore. I’m rock solid, and every inch of me is screaming, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Heavy fog stretches toward the line of chained children. The force field doesn’t block the acid at all; it seeps right through.

I’m shaking and breathing too fast. Let me out, please, let me out, I want to scream. This isn’t real, so I can’t die, but I can still feel pain—I’ll feel everything.

Moonshine reaches the children. I almost yell at them. I almost run and try to pull them out of the acid’s way, even though they’re not real. But it’s too late.

Their clothes sizzle and disintegrate. Their bodies contort in unnatural positions, like they’re burning insects instead of humans. Their mouths open in piercing screams—too many, too many—that make me want to fly out of my skin.

The acid is almost to me now.

I want to run. I want to be anywhere but here, even in quarantine, even staring at the muzzle of a rifle. Burning to death by acid is worse than any other kind of death.

But my instructor said not to run.

But I need to—I
have
to.

But there’s no more time. The fog of moonshine clouds my vision. My face pulls away from my head like some hand is wrenching it. Then my hands and arms—everything. I burn like someone sliced me all over and drowned me in salt, and then set me on fire. The acid claws at my throat—I can’t breathe. I can’t think, and I sob and scream.

Let me die, I plead. But I don’t die. Instead, I scream. Despite the fact that I don’t want to give the instructors the satisfaction of having brought me to this level. The pain is too much, so I keep screaming, and soon I can’t tell if it’s me anymore. If I’m even real. Somewhere in the hazy darkness of my mind, I remember this isn’t real. This is only part of a test.

But I’m still on fire, and I can’t stop screaming.

click

The sickening feeling of acid corrosion zaps away like it was never there. The straps holding me down loosen and fall away. Hands lift the helmet off my head and remove the mesh things from my ears.

I still clutch the arms of the chair, and my knuckles are plaster-white. My teeth might fall out, they’re so clenched.

My instructor’s fingers fly across her tablet. She gives me a small, careful smile. “Great job, Clementine.”

It takes me a second to understand what she means: I didn’t run in the simulation. I followed orders, which is what she wanted.

This must’ve been a test of my obedience.

I’m shaking as she helps me out of the chair.

She snaps her fingers. “There’s one more thing, and you can go.”

A second instructor approaches with a tray. A thick metal syringe sits upon it.

My feet move to scramble backward, to run, before I can even stop them. If there’s one thing in this world I hate more than officials and their cam-bots, it’s needles. I don’t even know why, really. My fear stems from vague memories, from my earliest days in the sanitarium: A flash of a glinting needle. A flash of pain. A flash of a nurse leaning over me telling me to
stop crying
.

But I force my feet not to run. I make myself stay put.

I can’t run. This is still a test.

My instructor observes me. She slips her fingers around the syringe and picks it up. “Why didn’t you run just now?” she says softly.

Honestly, I don’t know. Officials use syringes like that on kids in the detention facility, to cripple them temporarily as punishment for their actions. Doctors use syringes to treat Unstables—people with ridiculously high Promise who fall off the deep end, whom the Developers want to fix. Needles scare the stars out of me.

But this is a test of my obedience.

“Because you didn’t want me to,” I say slowly.

The approval in her eyes deepens, though her lips barely part when she smiles. “You know, this isn’t something that would hurt you.” She flicks the metal. “This is a special injection that Core citizens are given to raise their health and stamina—to ensure they survive to old age and their Promise remains high and stable. If you are picked for Extraction, you’ll receive it too.”

I lick my chapped lips.

“What would you give for a way off the Surface, Clementine?”

Logan’s face slides into my head. The one person I know I’d miss if they took me away.

Looking into my instructor’s shining eyes, I push his face to the back of my mind.

“Everything,” I say.

3

I still remember the night Laila learned she wasn’t picked for Extraction. Logan and I stood in the crowd outside the building where the choosing takes place, watching the pictures appear one by one on the CorpoBot screens. Watching as the pictures switched to a video of the new Extractions shaking hands with the governor, relief in their eyes and smiles on their faces. Laila wasn’t one of them.

Her body shook with sobs all night. Her cries kept me awake.

“I don’t wanna do this anymore,” she said. “They’re gonna make me have babies, and steal them away before I can even see their faces. Why can’t they just kill me now?”

My eyes stung and I clenched my hands into fists. It felt like the sky was falling on the two of us and we had no cover. Nothing I said would calm her down.

“Can’t you just kill me, Clementine?” she said.

She came up with a plan. She’d break into a greenhouse and steal one of the shovels. She wanted me to smash the back of her head in.

“No, no, you can’t,” I said, really sobbing now, really choking. “Please don’t leave me. You’re my family.”

Family. A word with three syllables that the instructors had defined in school. Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers.

People who loved each other.

Laila didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she sighed and pulled me onto her lap. I wrapped my arms around her neck, burying my face in her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I won’t leave you yet.”

“You can still try to convince them you’re Promising,” I said. “Please try. They might still make an exception.”

She didn’t answer for a moment. I knew what she was thinking: The Developers don’t make exceptions.

But she didn’t say that out loud. Instead, she planted a soft kiss in my hair. “Okay, I’ll try,” she said. “I’ll keep up my Promise. Maybe I’ll even try to escape the settlement if I get brave enough. There’s gotta be a way, right?”

“I hope so,” I whispered.

But she never did get brave enough.

*   *   *

The field grass is still wet from yesterday’s rain. It muddies Laila’s old boots with every step.

I’m walking with a group of sixteen-year-olds, led by two officials and a cam-bot. A hov-pod transported us to the fields near the work camp after the test. We never get a day off work because there is always work to do. Today is no different.

“Did you run?” a girl beside me whispers to a boy. She fidgets and glances at the official, probably to make sure he can’t hear her.

“When?” the boy asks.

“During the test.”

He doesn’t answer—we aren’t supposed to discuss the test at all. But his cheeks flush red. He must have run.

“It’s okay.” The girl squeezes his hand. “So did I.”

“I didn’t,” a voice to my left says. The girl who speaks has blond hair and a face that would be beautiful, if it weren’t covered with dust and bruises. I’ve seen her in school, but we’ve never spoken.

“The instructor said not to, so I didn’t,” she says. “I didn’t even scream.”

The other girl narrows her eyes. “No one asked you, Ariadne.”

The blonde, Ariadne, wraps an arm tightly around her body and stares at her bare feet in the grass.

My hands can’t help trembling a little. Some of the others who tested didn’t run. Some of them obeyed the instructors—of course they did. But how many?

No. Stop thinking about it. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.

My eyes scan the workers in the distance, in the crop fields. I wonder how Grady did. He must’ve finished his test earlier than me, or maybe he’s still in one of the machines, because I haven’t seen him yet.

A big part of me is glad I don’t have to see him yet, that I don’t have to find out how he thinks he did. He’s my friend, so of course I want him to be picked tomorrow. I want him to be safe.

But if the Developers pick him, that’s one less chance for me.

We reach the greenhouses at the edge of the field, which sit near the packaging warehouse and the animal corrals. I’m grateful for the distraction. In the nearest corral, brown-spotted couras chew on tufts of grass.

Outside the warehouse, a warden shoves a plastic bucket into my arms and attaches a white tag to my wrist. The small dots along the tag flash green. If I tried to run, a warden would flip a switch and an electric current would pulse through my body, crippling me long enough for officials to capture me. The electric force field around the Surface settlement’s perimeter is only a secondary precaution.

My eyes trail to where it sits in the distance, a green, shimmering wall beyond the crop fields. It stands at least thirty feet tall—tall enough that it’s impossible to get over without a flight pod. If I had access to a pod and knew how to fly it, or if I could break into the security hub in the city and disable the force field, running might actually be an option.

But it’s too risky. And even if Logan and I did manage to escape on our own, we don’t know for sure what’s outside the settlement, what fills the rest of the Surface. Instructors say there are oceans and mountains and fields—places Core scientists visit sometimes on research trips for the Developers.

But they could be lying. They tell us what’s out there so we’ll long for Extraction, which is the only future that might let us travel the rest of the Surface.

What’s out there might be just as dangerous as life in the work camp, or worse.

I near the force field as we walk to the food crops. Hundreds of others are already working beneath the hot sun, pulling weeds or spraying fertilizer chemicals. Cam-bots hover here and there, providing extra sets of eyes for the wardens.

I slip away from the group to search for Logan. I squeeze between children and tall stalks of shir grain, cursing my short stature. Hoping the wardens and cam-bots don’t notice me.

It doesn’t take me long to spot him. He moves along a row of nage greens with a bucket in his hands, his sweaty clothes clinging to his body.

I watch him for a moment, not moving, not speaking. My heart thumps in my ears. I’m terrified to see him after what I said earlier, when I was in the testing room with that instructor.

But I’m sure he would’ve said the same thing. I’m sure he’d give me up, if it meant he’d win an escape. Wouldn’t he?

Maybe I’m lying to make myself feel better.

I wipe dust and sweat out of my eyes, and join the row beside Logan’s. Bending, I sprinkle coarse, smelly manure around the golden roots of a hoava plant.

He notices me, and his eyes search my face for some sign of how the test went. He wants me to say something first, but I don’t because it’s useless. What I think or feel, or want to say or do doesn’t matter. Not when it comes to this.

“How’d it go?” he asks.

Two rows to my right, a girl falls to her knees from exhaustion. “Get up,” a greasy-haired warden snaps. When she doesn’t, he hisses through his teeth and stomps over the plants to reach her.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Not too bad, I hope.”

Logan’s forehead creases. He reaches out and laces our fingers. His hand is warm and steadying. I close my eyes and let it distract me from the girl’s whimpering as the warden wrenches her from the ground. From my worry about tomorrow.

But only for a moment. Then Logan lets go and turns back to the nage greens, and I move to the next hoava root.

A moment is all we can spare with the wardens watching.

Beads of sweat gather on my face, neck, and under my armpits as we move down the rows. The sun overhead burns scorching red. Flies buzz around me. I swat at them, but they don’t go away.

Logan works beside me, sometimes a few feet ahead, sometimes a few feet behind. I want to tell him about the test, even though we aren’t supposed to. Last year, all he told me was that his limp hadn’t helped him. He wouldn’t say it straight out, but I think he guessed that was the only reason he wasn’t picked for Extraction, since he’s always been intelligent and obedient. He came home after the names were announced and didn’t smile for days, even when I tried to comfort him.

He’s mostly silent now. I wish I knew what he was thinking. But I’m mostly glad I don’t.

My fingers tremble as I work. Every time I swallow, it feels like I’m swallowing rocks, my throat is so parched. My empty stomach makes me dizzy. I’m surrounded by food and it’s tempting to eat something, but I can’t be caught stealing. That’s a form of disobedience, and it could earn me transfer to the detention facility and cost me my shot at escape tomorrow.

Of course, some kids, usually the older ones, manage to steal without getting caught. They hoard crops in secret places in their shacks and trade them to other kids. Sometimes I’ve joined in their market, but not often. It’s too dangerous.

“Hey, Clementine,” Logan says softly.

I glance at the warden to make sure he’s facing away from us. When I see he isn’t looking our way, I turn to Logan. He slips his free hand into his trouser pocket. “Yeah?” I say.

“I found something special earlier. Thought you might like it.” He gives me a hopeful smile as he removes a small flower and twirls the green stem between his fingers. The petals glint silver like metal.

My feet falter. The breaths collide in my throat.

Of all the children in the camp, I like to think I’m one of the braver ones. Not all the time, of course. Some days the whippings and beatings make me want to curl up in a ball. When I dream of officials dragging Logan to quarantine, I wake drenched in sweat and trembling, but I calm down. I get over it. I have to be good at ignoring my fear, because how else will I prove I deserve to escape it?