Inner Circle

by Y A Marks

  I stopped. I had to gather my strength. Tears welled in my eyes. Shannon reached out and grabbed my hand.

  “If I didn’t love people then when they left me or died or whatever, it wouldn’t hurt. That was my life. I only let a few people in, just enough to keep myself sane. That’s why this is so hard…”

  “What… What is so hard?”

  “Being this person that everyone thinks can save them. And it’s worse now… because there might be more people like me, which means I have a choice. I didn’t have a choice before.”

  A ton of weight seemed to be crushing my heart. I wanted to rip it out, tear the pain out of me, but I had to focus. I had to stay in control.

  “Paeton, I’m not sure I’m with you. I’m like, really confused.”

  I stared at her patchy, red marks. There was something about Shannon, her innocence that made me feel better. “I am too…”

  I glanced at her eyebrows twitching. With more Master Key holders, I didn’t have to be the one to take down the Summit. Someone else could come forward and take my place. I wasn’t the proverbial chosen one anymore. I had a choice. While it might be difficult to find someone else, it was possible.

  That’s why I was so afraid. When Trivet told me I wasn’t the only one, I should’ve been relieved. Someone else could pick up this burden I had been carrying for the last week. But for some reason, I felt worse. It was almost like I wasn’t needed. My new friends could abandon me to try and find a better Paeton, like my doppelgänger on the news.

  Shannon waved me closer to her with her left hand. I kneeled down, and we held each other for a few seconds. It was nice to feel like I had a friend, even if we did just meet. She didn’t understand everything. My mind was just starting to put all the pieces together. She probably thought I was a blabbering idiot, if not just a regular idiot. I was just glad that she’d listened. It did feel better to tell someone.

  “You should get some rest,” Shannon said.

  I didn’t argue. I pulled away and lay down on the cot next to hers. I made myself comfortable and faced the ceiling. She gave me three encouraging pats on my shoulder and after a few seconds, my eyes closed.

  CHAPTER 17

  After few deep breaths, I was able to calm down and drift into a world of complete darkness away from the turmoil of the prison.

  A few flashes of harsh light struck my eyes. I winced against the sun as it poured down through crisp, green trees. The smell of polish sausage and freshly baked bread drifted on the breeze with a hint of magnolia.

  It didn’t take me long to remember where I was. This was the second tier of the city. Gray sidewalks ran next to the street where dozens of magnacars flew along quietly. Trees grew out of brick terraces surrounded by all sorts of flowers and grasses. In the distance were the tops of buildings, because the bulk of the buildings were beneath this level. Everything was clean, neat, and manicured. Street vendors dotted the sidewalks. They were probably Lower-Cs selling wares with authorized visas, but there were no repugnant smells, trash, graffiti, or homeless people.

  A tug on my arm drew my attention, and I glanced up to my right. My mother smiled.

  “C’mon Paety. Once our visit with Dr. Diaz is over, we’ll go get some ice cream. How’s that sound?”

  “Good,” I said. The voice was like mine, but with the higher register of younger vocal cords.

  We entered into a building that appeared much like the others. The building’s glass was washed to a perfect shine, and the sky reflected back toward me with a light green hue. For whatever reason, the green sky bothered me.

  My mother and I entered an elevator and traveled down to the twenty-fourth floor where we exited. After turning a few corners, we came to a door with the title “Nanorobotics and Applied Electronic Medicine.” Once inside, I saw a little girl with hair colored in blonde and brown streaks. I recognized her immediately and lit up from the inside out.

  “Chloe!” I yelled.

  I broke free from my mom’s grasp and ran over to her.

  “Hey, Paeton.” She smiled and gave me a hug, but her eyes stared at the floor. Her pink face was flush, and her nose was red.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I watched her green eyes zigzag for a second before they focused back on me. “I had to get a shot. It was in my hand. It’s supposed to protect me from a new kind of virus that’s spreading.”

  “Oh, my mom says I’m here for something like that, too.”

  “I don’t like shots.”

  “Can I see?” I asked.

  She held out her hand, and I grasped it in mine. In the center of her left palm was a red dot with dark pink circling it.

  “It looks like it hurt,” I said.

  “It did. Momma says they put a little robot in me that will keep me safe.”

  “Is it like our neck trackers?” I asked pointing to my clavicle.

  She shrugged. “I’m tired of getting shots and stuff. I just wanna go home.”

  “Well, my mom says that she’s taking me for ice cream afterward. Maybe, you can ask your mom to meet us?”

  “We’ve got ice cream at home, and I’m tired. I’ll see you on Monday in class.”

  “Oh, okay.” All of my enthusiasm drained away as I stared into her tormented face.

  Her mother finished up at the admittance station then turned around toward Chloe. “Ready to go?” her mother asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Chloe said, before turning to me. “See you later.”

  “Okay, see you.”

  Her mother clasped her daughter’s right hand and guided her out of the office waiting area.

  I walked over to my mother, who was standing at the admittance station, signing some paperwork.

  “Why do I have to get another shot?” I asked.

  “It’s for your protection, Paety,” she said.

  “But what if I don’t want to be protected?”

  “Did your little friend tell you something?”

  “Yes…”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said it hurt.” I avoided my mother’s eyes as she glanced down from the computerized clipboard that she was signing.

  She put the pen on top of the clipboard and passed it to the woman on the other side of the desk. A warm smile appeared on my mother’s lips. “C’mon,” she said and outstretched a hand toward a few chairs near the windows.

  We sat down, and I took a brief look outside. The world on the other side looked dirty and dark. It had to be noon. The sun was shining when we entered the building, but I didn’t understand why it so dark in the office. My mother had told me that we lived on the second tier of the city and anything below it wasn’t as nice, but I didn’t know what she meant.

  “Are you afraid, Paeton?” my mother asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I don’t want to be hurt. I don’t want something inside me that will hurt.”

  Her face brightened, but her forehead tightened.

  “Do you know that you started off inside of me?” she asked.

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “And do you know how much pain it was to get you out?”

  “No…”

  “Well, it was a lot of pain. I had a lot of shots, and that was just the beginning.”

  I stared at her and adjusted in my seat. My leg slid back and underneath my butt.

  She put her hand on my head and ran her thumb over my eyebrows. “I went through a lot of pain, but in the end I had you. And I’m so happy that I did. Aren’t you happy I had you?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “All the pain that I thought was so bad left as soon as I saw your face. Even if it was a hundred times as bad, I’d do it all over again just to have my little Paeton. You were worth it.”

  She opened her arms, and I pulled myself into her embrace. I laid my head on her shoulder and smelled her perfume of black cherries and wine. As her arms wrapped tightly around me, I gazed out into the gloomy world beyond the green glass.

&nb
sp; A door thumped open behind us, and I turned to see Dr. Diaz. He stood, focused with his hair slightly out of place on his head. He had a long white coat on over some khaki pants and brown, loafer-type shoes that looked almost like house slippers.

  “Paeton Washington,” he said.

  My mother released me.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  My mother and I followed Dr. Diaz through the waiting room door into a mini-maze of hallways. A few other doctors and nurses were there along with a few more children. I recognized a few of them, but there was at least one boy that I didn’t know.

  We stopped at a room with a desk, cabinets, and faucet. In the middle of the room was an exam table that reminded me of a kitchen island. There were two chairs, one next to the exam table, and another under the desk. Dr. Diaz pulled the chair out from under the desk and sat down.

  “Can you climb up here for me, Paeton?” he asked, gesturing to the exam table.

  I glanced at my mother. Her eyebrows arched high on her head. “C’mon Paety.”

  I nodded and climbed up on the table.

  “Do you need help?” Dr. Diaz asked.

  “No, I got it,” I said.

  After I was settled and nervously kicking my legs against the yellow plywood on the base of the exam table, Dr. Diaz rolled his chair closer to me. He put his hands out and gently touched my calves, stopping me from kicking the table.

  “Do you know why you are here, Paeton?” he asked.

  “Cause I need to get a shot for some electronic disease,” I said.

  He chuckled. “Sort of. I’ve known your mother for a few years. I told her about…” he paused and glanced over at my mother. She sat down, keeping eye-contact with Dr. Diaz.

  My mother finished his broken sentence. “Paeton, the world is a bad place. And people’s ideas can be like diseases. In our world you have …” She glanced up as though she were trying to figure out the perfect words. “…Selfie-itis, Social-Mediocrity, Panic-plasia, Gover-D.C. Worry-ity. But right now, we’re more worried about Big Brother mixed with Social Hierarchy Aphasia.”

  I didn’t understand any of the words that she was saying. They seemed garbled. I wondered if she was talking about diseases at all, but I couldn’t comprehend anything else. I knew what a selfie was, and that was far from some kind of sickness.

  “Dr. Diaz has created something that may help you to be immune. This shot will make it so that all those things won’t hurt you, and maybe one day, you can pass your immunity on to others,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Do you have any questions for Dr. Diaz?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Okay. Remember, we’ll go for ice cream right after.”

  I nodded again.

  “You’re a brave girl,” Dr. Diaz said.

  He pulled out a syringe and rotated around in the seat. After opening a drawer, he reached in and pulled out a vial. He held it up. Something inside it sparkled. I only saw it for a second, but something had reflected the light in the room into my eyes.

  He put the syringe into the vial and drew what looked like clear gel into the syringe. Then, he spun back around and gave me a half-hearted smile. I glanced back at my mother for support.

  She rubbed my shoulder. “I’m right here.”

  He reached for my left hand. My stomach twisted inside of me. I didn’t want the pain that Chloe had felt. I didn’t understand why this was happening or what these odd diseases were that my mother was talking about.

  “It’ll be alright, Paety,” my mother said.

  I gulped and held out my hand. The needle pricked my skin, and a wave of pain fired into my arm. The muscles in my arm fought against my mind. The needle screwed into my hand.

  After a second, it was over and Dr. Diaz wiped the area with an alcohol swab.

  “See, all done,” he said. “Not too bad.”

  I shook my head, but a few tears ran down my cheeks.

  My mother guided me to the front of the office. She and Dr. Diaz talked on the way.

  “Thanks again for the introduction to Paeton’s class,” he said.

  “Let’s just hope that you are right,” my mother said.

  “Either way, this is an experiment in time, not technology.”

  My eight-year-old mind couldn’t grasp the meaning behind their conversation. All I knew was that my hand was hurting, I was in a doctor’s office, and I was going for ice cream because I had been a good girl.

  I held onto my mother’s waist as she signed out. After she exchanged hopeful glances with Dr. Diaz, my mother and I left the twenty-fourth floor. We used the elevator to rise back to the Middle Tier and the world that I understood.

  ***

  My eyelids flew open. The dark ceiling flickered with orange lamplight. My skin felt sticky and sweat beads pooled on my skin. I sat up on the cot and put one leg over the side. My other leg, I pulled underneath me. I was in the emergency room of the Razorback Township.

  My subconscious mind had found some of the information that I had forgotten for all of these years. There was no way that I would remember a random doctor’s visit. Especially if I received ice cream at the end, happy memories don’t always stick like sad ones do.

  I grinned to myself. It was nice to see my mother again. I never recognized how much we looked like. We weren’t twins by any means, but we had the same color hair and the same baby face.

  Despite my warm affection for my mother, I felt cold. My hands wrapped around my arms even though I was still covered in the dark gray coat. For a long time, I didn’t understand any of what had happened when I was eight, but the understanding took hold in my mind. I don’t think my mother and Dr. Diaz were speaking garbled ideas about some odd disease; really they were discussing the way people were, saying that people can sometimes become the disease itself. So in a way, Trivet was wrong. I wasn’t a walking virus. I was the cure.

  Everyone in my class and anybody else who had been injected with this Master Key-thing was now a part of an experiment to place us into every social group. It didn’t matter if the test subjects had money in the bank or not. We could move in and out of any social world we wanted.

  The concept was crazy. I had watched visa holding women get up in the middle of the night just to go to work. I had seen people’s bodies thrown in the trash because they were Lower-C.

  Everything in my world made me believe that there was a group that was better than me. Although I tried to fight it, I wanted to be Upper-C. I wanted to look like them, act like them, have a billion followers on social media like them. My mind told me that I didn’t want those things, that I was content. However, deep within my heart, I was just as shallow as an Upper-C. I even wondered if things had been different if I would have been like Sarah Graham, the blonde brat who told me I would be better off dead.

  With the Master Key, I wasn’t a Lower-C or Middle-C or an Upper-C. I wasn’t a part of any class. If I was a part of one then it was because I chose to be. The concept of Class Zero meant a place where everyone ended up. It was the class of death, the great equalizer. With this new information, things were different. I was Class Zero, but I wasn’t dead. I could be anything I wanted.

  My emotions fought for peace. Part of my mind was angry, another part was sad. I was being torn apart. No matter where I went or whom I talked to, they all knew what I was just discovering—that I had to fight.

  I had to help Escerica, not just because I had an instant computer hack in my hand, but because I understood that a person’s worth is not based on where they have been, but on what they are willing to do to make a difference. When I fought for Mari and Miko, it was because I wanted something better for them. I wasn’t special because I had some chip in my hand. If I had anything worthwhile inside of me, it was the fact that I cared. Even the people I had killed, I still cared about them. I didn’t want any of them to die or to hurt because of me. This was the thing that made me different and that
, in my mind, made it important to fight.

  As I sat in the dark room with a few ladies whispering off to my far right and Shannon sleeping on my left, a new kind of strength blossomed within me. If I truly wanted to feel safe again or give Mari and Miko a better life, I needed to start acting with courage and hope instead of indifference.

  The tarp at the door flopped back. Jonas entered but no light entered with him, letting me know that it was still night. He walked toward me and sat down on the cot between me and Pyra, who was resting. Shannon was still asleep on the opposite cot.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Trivet has a plan to get us out of here,” he whispered.

  I was hopeful, but my forehead tightened as I looked at him. “We’re in a maximum security prison. I know he’s smart, but how is that going to happen?”

  “The prison design is simple but effective. At the edges of the complex, there is the sixteen-foot-tall, concrete wall. On the other side of it are two, electric fields. Even if we got past the wall, the fields would fry us. The fields can be turned off, but security protocol keeps them active for five minutes by running them on two separate generators. One of the generators is located right on the outside of the north wall. The other is located right next to Circle One. Both are behind the wall,” he said.

  My brain pulsed like it was going to explode. This wasn’t information that I could use, and he wasn’t getting to the point fast enough for my mind to piece everything together.

  He gave me a dark look and continued. “Trivet and his crew will break through the north wall and take out the secondary generator. All we have to do is take out the first generator and then break into Norwood’s office to disable the final piece of the security system.”

  “Okaaaaaaaay, and how are we going to do this? We don’t have a password or anything,” I said.

  He reached out and grabbed my left hand. “Remember, you’re the Master Key.”

  I stared at my hand and then back into his face. Crix, I hated when obvious things slipped my mind.