Extraction (4 page)

This flower is different.

“Get that away from me,” I say, panicked. I jerk away from Logan, bumping into the worker girl behind me. She makes a sound or says something, but I don’t care.

It’s been eight years since I’ve seen a flower with silver petals like this. But it seems like yesterday. I can still feel the ache slipping through my veins, the pinpoints of knives all over my body, the fever dragging me into a world of liquid fire.

About a hundred years ago, silver aster flowers were created by a Core scientist who injected a special kind of protein into the gene code of a flower, as part of some experiment. The protein released hormones in the aster pollen that relieved stress and slowed brain activity. The result was a pollen with a high calming effect on humans, that could be used as a stress or pain reliever for sanitarium patients. But I’m allergic to it.

“Wait, wait,” Logan says, staring at me like I’m out of my mind. “It’s just—it’s not—oh, jeez…” He runs his fingers through his hair, looking at the flower with widening eyes. Realizing why I’m freaked out.

“Did you forget what happened last time?” I ask.

“I did—I’m sorry. But this is different. This isn’t what you think.” With a callused hand, he tears the petals. Thin, silver wrappings fall away, leaving behind the midnight blue of a common aster—a flower that will definitely not hurt me.

Nothing can stop the heat from spreading through my cheeks.

“I forgot, I’m sorry,” Logan says, his eyes on the ground. “I was just trying to make it look prettier for you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a curious cam-bot hovering over. I fix my bucket in my arms, swallow hard, and turn back to the hoava roots. I hope Logan will do the same. We have to keep working. We can’t attract any more attention.

But I feel like such an idiot. That day eight years ago when we ran across real silver asters, they had spilled out of a hovercraft’s cargo due to a security mistake. They don’t grow on the Surface; they’re genetically engineered in labs in the Core, in petri dishes under LED lighting. Logan couldn’t have gotten hold of one.

My hand shakes as I reach for a rotten root and wrench it up from the ground.

“I’m sorry,” Logan says. He’s standing too close to me again—the cam-bot is sure to notice—but I can’t bring myself to push him away. “I swear I forgot about the…” He sighs. “I just thought it might make you smile.”

“On a normal day, if I thought it was a joke, maybe it would have.”

“Right.” The word comes out half caught between his lips. Almost as if he forgot today isn’t normal, or maybe he was only trying to put it out of his mind.

Of course he remembers now. His lips press into a tight line.

I rip up another rotten root from the ground. Of course he was trying to be sweet and I messed it up. I mess up lots of things when it comes to him and me.

I realize he’s stopped working again.

“What are you doing?” I hiss.

His brows furrow, and he stares at something I’m too short to see. “Do you smell that?”

I pause. I sniff the air. It smells like manure and musk and vegetation, but there’s also something else. Faint at first, then stronger.

Fire smoke.

“Get working!” the greasy-haired warden yells.

But others notice the smell too. Muttering ripples among the laborers.

“Can you see anything?” I ask Logan.

He shakes his head. “The wind isn’t bad. Hopefully it won’t spread.”

“Are you
deaf
?” the warden snarls.

I turn, and he’s in my face, spewing saliva. The leather of his metallic whip rips the flesh of my arm, and I gasp, dropping my bucket.

Logan shields me with his body. The whip smacks his side. He winces.

The nearest cam-bots start beeping—a loud, obnoxious sound that makes my ears sting. In the distance, just before the electric force field, bright flames feed on crops and grass. Smoke blurs my view of the children who shout and stumble over each other to escape it.

The warden shoves Logan aside and staggers past us, realizing what’s going on.

“Get water!” he yells over the beeping bots. “We need water!”

The emergency pods are already in the air. They come from somewhere near the greenhouses, and fly above the flames. Doors in their undersides slide open. Water spills out. I’ve never seen so much of it.

Logan pulls me to my feet. I’m trembling. “You’re bleeding,” he says.

I barely hear him, or notice the sting in my arm. Instead, I notice how officials are surrounding the workers nearest the force field and the fire. How they’re dragging the kids into a line and roping their legs together with thin pieces of electric wire. They only use wire like that to handcuff people before taking them to the detention facility, or to quarantine.

Logan’s arms wrap around me.

“Why are they doing that?” I ask.

“They must think it wasn’t an accident.”

My eyes flit again to the handcuffed children, to the smoke streaming across their faces. They’re all older than me, and taller. One or two might be crying. But most don’t look frightened. They hold their heads high and bite back their screams when the wardens snap whips at their ankles.

Some of the chemicals we use out here are flammable, but it takes matches to start a fire, or lightning, and there isn’t lightning. The kids must’ve stolen matches. I bet they wanted to set fire to the whole field, just to cause trouble, or maybe to try to run in the commotion.

But the force field is still up. There isn’t anywhere to run.

The officials near me and Logan are shouting, telling everyone to move. I guess we’re quitting early.

I force myself to turn away from the handcuffed workers. I lean into Logan as we move down the crop rows toward the greenhouses, where officials will pass out our daily meal rations—the leftover food that didn’t pass inspection.

They’ll kill the rebels for what they did. They always replace people who don’t cooperate. Some of them might be sixteen; some of them might not have even tested yet, but that doesn’t matter. They’ve lost all their Promise now.

Maybe that’s why they did this, though. Maybe they wanted to die.

4

Logan and I follow the old train tracks along the edge of the forest. The hov-pods and shuttles still run in the evenings, but officials don’t care if we walk back to the work camp instead, if we want to. Sometimes it’s nicer.

The tracks haven’t been used since long before I was born, not since the days when everyone lived on the Surface and there were no lower sectors. The days before the Developers ruled and scientists had to build the acid deflector shield to cover the whole globe and protect our planet. The days before the upper class fled underground to survive.

Logan limps beside me over the tangled weeds and strewn rocks. He and I are alone, except for the spare cam-bot that floats past every so often to monitor the area.

“Are you still bleeding?” Logan asks.

“No.” I quickly wipe the blood on my wrist onto my dress.

Frowning, he takes my wrist gently and touches the cut with a light finger. I wince. “It hurts?” he asks.

“A little.” I pull away from him. It actually hurts a lot now that I’m not distracted by the fire, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“I’ll help you clean it when we get home.”

Laughter echoes from somewhere not far ahead. The foreign sound makes my stomach twist. I squint to see who it came from, and so does Logan.

His eyebrows draw together. “Is that Grady?”

There are four figures in all, two standing and two on their knees between the tracks.

Grady stands unevenly, one foot on a track and one on the ground. The girl beside him is talking to the two boys on the ground, who are laughing. I tense. They’re all in my classes at school, but they’re not my friends. These three used to bully me all the time, whenever I scored higher than everyone on an exam. Throwing rocks was their specialty. My specialty was evading them.

Something about the way the boys, Larry and Carter, are kneeling now, clearly messing with something on the ground, makes my palms sweat. I check for cam-bots in the vicinity. There aren’t any, for the moment.

“Grady!” Logan calls, and his head turns.

Dirt and sweat streak across his face, clumping in his eyebrows. “Hey,” he says.

Larry and Carter look up too. Their eyes narrow ever so slightly. Carter whispers something to Larry, and they both snicker.

My eyes trail over them, from their arms to the rocks in their hands. They smash the rocks against the iron track, weakening the metal to mutilate it. It’s already splitting into pieces that look like perfect weapons.

My heartbeat picks up, matching the rhythm of the
clanks
.

“That’s dangerous. If a bot sees you—”

“You can run if you’re frightened.” The girl, Nellie, cuts me off, crossing her arms and smirking. Her black hair is shorter than it was the last time I saw her, and spiked a little with mud.

Logan glares at Larry and Carter, who are still smashing away and whispering. He turns to Grady. “Are you coming home with us?”

Grady shakes his head. The color rises in his cheeks. “I’m gonna stay here awhile.”

I don’t understand how he ended up here. I’ve never seen him with Nellie or these boys before. I’ve never seen him hanging out with anyone except Logan.

“If you get caught messing with the tracks, you won’t have any shot tomorrow,” I say. “You know that, right?”

Grady laughs, a sad laugh. There’s red around his irises. “You really think I have a shot?”

Uncertainty drums in my chest.

Really, I don’t know if he has a shot. He’s always been obedient, willing to do just about anything without complaining. His scores and speeds in the genetics lab were excellent, but just average in his other subjects. The chances of him getting picked when competing against everyone else …

“Of course,” I say.

Pain flickers in Grady’s eyes, and my stomach drops to my toes. I took too long to answer.

“Yes, you do,” Logan says firmly.

“You don’t have to lie to me.” Grady drops onto the track.

“Grady, we’re not lying—” I reach for his shoulder, but he knocks my hand away. I feel the sting beneath my ribs.

“Maybe we’ll get picked and maybe we won’t.” Nellie shrugs.

“We’re just making sure we’ve got a backup plan,” Carter says, smirking at me and holding up his rock.

“Dismantling a train track is your plan?” I ask.

“We’re making weapons so we can fight the adults,” Larry says, pausing to flex his almost nonexistent muscles. “Especially the officials.”

Nellie gives me a hard look, challenging me. “I’d like to see you come up with a better plan.”

I don’t know whether to be mad or laugh. Of course I could come up with a better plan—try to break into the security hub and disable the force field, and escape the settlement that way—but I wouldn’t be stupid enough to try. Getting caught would earn me an early trip straight to quarantine.

Logan focuses on Grady again. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

“Will you just give it up?” Nellie says with an eye roll.

I ignore her. “Trust me, Grady, you’ve got a shot tomorrow. After all, you’re competing against people like Larry and Carter.”

Carter hisses through his teeth.

“Maybe,” Grady mumbles. He doesn’t look up.

“Grady, please—”

“He doesn’t care what you have to say,” Nellie snaps.

Logan tugs on my hand. “Let’s just go,” he says.

I don’t move for another second. I watch Grady, pleading silently for him to come with us. He doesn’t belong here with these people.

He wraps his arms around his legs.

Logan starts to walk away, still holding my hand, and this time I follow him. I pull my eyes away from Grady and try not to focus on the growing emptiness in my stomach.

This feeling that something unbreakable has jammed itself between us and Grady, and things will never be the same.

*   *   *

I sit on the straw cot inside my shack. Logan ties a strip of fabric around the cut on my forearm. His fingers move deftly in the dim light seeping through holes in the ceiling.

If the cut were bigger, I might worry about infection, but I’ve had worse. We’ve always had to sleep off fevers and bind wounds ourselves. If the sickness is bad enough, officials bring a medi-bot to assess the situation. A life-threatening illness usually lands a sick kid in the sanitarium. But even then, that’s only if the kid has a high enough Promise that the Developers don’t want to lose his skills just yet. Promise is everything.

In the Core and in the adult cities in each sector, where everyone has high Promise, things are different. No one ever gets that sick. They’re vaccinated to prevent diseases before they happen.

Logan finishes tying the knot. “Is your side okay?” I ask.

“It’s fine,” he says, and stands and crosses the room. In the makeshift fire pit where Laila’s cot used to rest, a muckrat roasts on a skewer over sticks and dull flames. The stale bread and salty soup the wardens gave us for our daily rations didn’t fill my stomach, as usual. So we caught the rat in a ditch on our way home.

When we were younger, Logan and I made a game out of catching them. We would hide in the sewers, pretending we were statues, until the creatures scampered close enough for us to grab them. Whoever caught the fattest muckrat won. Then we would race home along the train tracks and kill the animal with a sharp stick before we showed it to Laila. I always did the killing because Logan was squeamish.

These days, he’s gotten better at it. While he tests the meat and removes it, I stand and crack the door open to check how low the sun is. It’s barely burning in the sky, a splotch of pale red in the approaching darkness. Officials send their bots to check the shacks an hour after sunset to keep the boys and girls separate, but we have some time. We have our ways of sneaking around after dark, anyway. All that matters is that we don’t do anything stupid enough to get caught.

“Hungry?” Logan asks.

“Very.” I shut the door and take half the muckrat from him. The tough meat burns my fingertips, and I gasp. But I don’t drop it.