by K A Riley
Cardyn glances at me out of the corner of his eye and gives me an encouraging thumbs-up, though I’m not feeling particularly excited at the moment.
“Intel is for those who are the best at figuring things out, solving puzzles, unraveling mysteries,” Hiller continues. “Those are the detectives in our army. Combat is for warriors. Fearless. Loyal. Dedicated to the cause and to the protection of others. Finally, Special Ops is the ‘harmonious expertise’ deployment. It means your skills are in balance. You’re versatile in mind and body. A free-thinker. An intellect with empathy. Special Ops is reserved not just for the best and brightest, but for those who surpass their own limits, who are better than the sum of their parts, and who demonstrate extraordinary abilities, even beyond known human limits.”
All of a sudden, I’m beginning to regret that I didn’t at least ask about bringing Render. Maybe I was right all along, that he would have helped me get into Special Ops. If Hiller could see me work with him, she might be impressed.
Then again, she might have him put to sleep. She doesn’t exactly strike me as the kind of person who loves animals. Actually, she doesn’t seem like she’s especially fond of people, either. I think she’d get along great with a computer.
“You will be assessed and graded at every step of the way,” she announces in her oddly charming lilt. “At the end of the program, if you pass it, your final scores will determine your deployment.”
I nudge Cardyn in the ribs with my elbow. “See?” I whisper through the side of my mouth. “I knew Special Ops was real.”
Speaking of extraordinary abilities, Hiller must have some kind of super-hearing, because she turns and shoots Card and me a quick, unreadable look. “I guarantee you,” she says with a pleasant smile, “Special Ops is as real as it gets.”
I feel myself blush, embarrassed at being overheard. Thankfully, Terk pulls the attention off me by thrusting his muscular arm into the air. “Excuse me. But what if someone…?”
“Doesn’t pass?” Hiller interrupts, reading his mind. “Then that person has nothing to offer us against our enemy and will be reassigned to the place where they can do the least damage to the cause.”
I look around at my fellow Seventeens only to see expressions of fear and shock on their faces. The word “reassigned” might as well have had finger-quotes around it. It’s a lot to take in, but the gist of Hiller’s introduction to the Processor is crystal clear: if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
This woman, the two heavily-armed men standing behind us, and the other two standing next to her seem like they’d happily get rid of any and all problems without losing a second of sleep.
6
Part of me has been hoping for what feels like ages that Hiller will direct us to a place where we can take a shower and get a bite to eat. But instead she leads us, along with Granden and Trench, into the imposing building. Like a herd of bleary-eyed sleepwalkers, we make our way down a long hall, through a door, and into a large open room. The room’s walls are as black as the building, but the floor is sterile and white. Eight treadmills, glistening silver, white, and blue, sit lined up side-by-side in the middle of the strange chamber.
Each of us Seventeen is assigned to one of the sleek machines. As we step up, Granden and Trench apply circular adhesive pads to our temples and forearms. Each pad is translucent with a thin coil of wire wrapped up inside of it like a tiny snake. As he applies more of the cold pads to my neck and hands, Granden lingers over the dark black pattern of the implants encircling my forearms. He traces the thick bands, the small black dots, and the gentle curves of the tapering black tails with his fingertips. I’m used to people in the Valta asking about the markings, the Neos, especially. I usually just call them my “tattoos” and that tends to be the end of it. If one of the younger kids pressed me on it, I’d joke about the patterns being a set of amazingly intricate birthmarks. Or a design plan for my next batch of crop circles. Or an elaborate stamp that my dad pressed into my skin, so he could identify me in case my zombie double appeared one day and tried to take my place.
Granden doesn’t ask anything, though. He lifts his finger off of my forearm and glances up at me, embarrassed for a split-second, I think. He smiles a little and moves on to Card.
After he and Trench finish applying the sensor pads to us, they go about fitting us with clear oxygen masks that they attach to our faces with white elastic straps. I turn to my left to see how the others are doing. I can barely see Brohn way down at the far end of our line. He’s still got that angry, determined look on his face that tells me he’s not anywhere near over the incident with Wisp.
In between us are Karmine, Kella, Terk, and Rain. Card is on my left with Amaranthine as the last in our line over on my right.
It occurs to me that none of us have really had a single chance to talk, compare notes, or commiserate about our fate as new Seventeens since we were first piled onto the transport truck back in the Valta.
Back home, I was never particularly sociable. But at least we could talk whenever we wanted about whatever we wanted. We may have been prisoners, slaves, or innocent victims of war, but when it came to expressing ourselves, we were at least free. Looking down the line of treadmills, I suddenly want nothing more than to joke around with Cardyn or to sit on a beach again and get to know Brohn better. I’d even settle for getting a math lesson from Rain or listen to Karmine blather on about military strategy.
But instead, we all just exchange a set of helpless, silent looks.
In the meantime, Trench goes back down our line. He’s taken what looks like a fat magic marker from a holster on his belt. He flips the bottom of it open with his thumb and inserts a thin metal clip. He snaps the device shut and spins it on his finger.
“I’ll be administering your Biscuit now,” Trench says with a maniacal grin.
Hiller advises us to ignore him. “What Mr. Trench is inserting under your right shoulder-blade is actually just a tracking chip. Won’t hurt a bit. You won’t even know it’s there, and it’ll help us keep you safe in case of an emergency. It will also help your commanding officer to locate you in the event you get lost on a mission once you’re out of here and off on your deployment.”
She says “lost,” but the crystal-clear implication is “wounded or killed.”
One by one, Trench sidles up behind us. He slips his marker device under our raised shirts and injects the chip under our skin. Hiller was wrong. It hurts a lot. I wince at the sharp pinch and try not to move my shoulder around too much while the pain slowly fades.
Satisfied that we’re all sufficiently prepped, Hiller gives us instructions that we’re now ready to begin what she calls a baseline cardio test. “We need to see where your endurance limits are, so we can properly elevate our expectations of you. I know you’re probably still reeling, and you just had a long drive and a bit of a hike getting here. But these stationary running tracks are low-impact grav-pads, so this should be smooth sailing. Just keep up with the pace of the pad, and you’ll be fine.”
“How long are we supposed to run?” Cardyn asks. His voice is muffled by the plastic mask over his face that fills with steam as he speaks. “There’s no timer.”
Hiller smiles at him and then gazes down the line at all of us. “You’re the timer,” she says. “There’s no clock and no countdown. You run until you hit zero.”
She turns around and heads for the door on the far side of the room with Granden and Trench still flanking her on either side. As the door slides shut behind them, sealing with a breathy whoosh, our puzzled looks are rudely interrupted by the whir of the treadmills that start zipping along under our feet. Simultaneously, we all break into a light jog. I’ve got my hands on the thin silver grip-bar in front of me, but the others are running without any support, their arms dangling or else pumping in slow rhythm at their sides.
After I feel like we’ve settled in, I decide I want to try to talk to Cardyn, who’s jogging alongside me, but
the oxygen mask makes it next to impossible for me to call out to him. I try to get his attention with a quick hand-wave, but he’s either too focused or too tired to notice me. I almost lose my balance and decide to keep my hands on the bar and my focus on not slipping off and killing myself.
As we jog along, I begin to lose my sense of time. There are no clocks on the walls or timers on the treadmills. There are no windows either this deep in the bowels of the building. It’s like being in the Recruiters’ transport truck all over again, and not knowing where I am in space or time twists my brain. At first, it’s kind of a nice feeling. To be alone with my own thoughts and in the company of my own breathing and heartbeat. I think back to Render. I know he can’t sense me from this distance, but I send him a mental message anyway. I tell him I’m okay and that I hope he’s feeling full and flying free. Normally, I’d feel something in return. Kind of a soft tingle in my temple and a warm sensation like a liquid blanket around my heart. But now…nothing. I know it sounds silly to think of a bird leaving a hole in my heart, but that’s how it feels. I glance down the line at Brohn and wonder if it’ll ever be filled again.
Then I think back to the fun times Card and I had, goofing around in the woods as we were growing up. Gathering berries and digging up edible roots, reading from whatever scraps of books were left, being taught about grammar and math by the Sixteens and the older Juvens, performing dangerous experiments to determine which leaves on which trees and which colorful plants were edible and which ones would make us violently ill. We all learned the hard way, after a series of intense asthma attacks and some muscle paralysis, to avoid the two pretty purple plants we later discovered were called “Larkspur” and “Lupine.” I remember all my training sessions over the years with Render. The meandering explorations into the woods. The hunt for the fat grubs he loved so much. The verbal and hand signals we eventually perfected to go along with the strange mental connection we were slowly cultivating. The times when I started to realize that the connection between us wasn’t just in my imagination. When I could feel the feedback of his mind in mine and the realization that, in a way, he was training me, too.
They’re nice memories to have, bright spots in a life that was often bleak and filled with danger and uncertainty.
I’m getting distracted. I haven’t run this much for this long in…well, ever. I feel my feet starting to drag a little on the treadmill’s grav-pad, so I turn my thoughts to the task at hand: chugging along, trying to stay focused, trying not to be the first one to stop. At least I’m not as hyper-competitive as Karmine or Kella. They’ve been known to get into rivalries that could last for days. I’m sure they’ll each try to outlast each other on the treadmills.
There isn’t much to the machine, just the thin silver handrail in front of me and the constant zip of the shiny white track beneath my feet. Back in the Valta, Keith’s Bike and Hike Equipment Rental had an old treadmill in the basement storage room. Rain’s family owned the place. Keith was her uncle. He brought a bunch of us downstairs once when we were maybe five or six years old. It was like a museum down there. He showed us the old equipment he said he couldn’t bear to part with. There were solar-powered flex machines, rubber-covered steel plates from before they came out with the mag-resistance system for weight-lifting, a frayed heavy bag for boxing, and a stationary bicycle with broken handlebars and a missing seat. And there was a big clunker of a treadmill, all faux-wood and black plastic around a heavy steel frame, with a complex panel of numbers and settings that looked like an airplane flight console.
We all scampered around down there, ducking back and forth between the aisles of dusty old equipment. We made up pretend games where the treadmill and broken bike were monsters, and we had to sneak around behind them to avoid being spotted and gobbled up.
Three months after that, Keith’s Hike and Bike was a pile of rubble with exposed pipes and wires and bent lengths of rebar snaking out from under jagged blocks of concrete and twisted steel cross-beams. Keith died in that first attack along with his wife, Rain’s parents, and two of her cousins. Years later, I saw two of the Sixteens dragging that same treadmill, smashed nearly beyond recognition, out of the broken building and over to the Discard Field in one of our many clean-up projects.
Pulling myself back to the present, I look over past Card to where Rain is and wonder if she’s having the same kind of memories. If the treadmill she’s running on reminds her of that tour of her uncle’s basement and of the family she lost at the hands of the Eastern Order and their cowardly drone attacks. For a second, I consider trying to signal her somehow, but she seems so focused that I decide to leave her alone. Besides, I’m getting tired, and I think if I tried to raise my hand or turn my body toward her, I’d go flying off this thing and make a total idiot of myself. So I keep chugging along, one foot after the other. The pace seems to quicken over time and has now settled into a relentless whoosh under my feet. I lengthen my strides to keep up. Then lengthen them again when the speed increases even more.
I’m sure hours have passed. At least six or seven if I had to guess. I’m soaked with sweat. My leg muscles are locked up like vice-grips. My throat is a scorched desert. I can’t focus my eyes anymore. It’s like I’m underwater, looking through wet glass in the middle of the night.
But we’re not supposed to quit, right? So am I supposed to run myself to death on this thing? Is someone watching us? There are no windows in this room. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have micro-cams or pocket drones or some other kind of hidden surveillance system set up. I doubt they’d go to the trouble of monitoring our vital signs without being able to see us as well. Is this part of some psychological test to see how well we follow orders, how long our minds and bodies will hold up under the weight of sheer exhaustion?
All I know is I don’t want to be the first person to quit. And I’m not.
I look down the line and see Terk, trembling and sweat-soaked, peeling the sensor pads from his body. He rips off the face mask and leaps down from his treadmill. His feet give out as he hits the floor and all six-and-a-half feet of his massive body slams to the ground. His long sandy-brown hair splays out as he falls. He rolls onto his back, sucking in air while his stomach rises up and down. He’s panting like a freight train, which is a horrifying sound, but at least it means he’s still alive. On either side of his now-empty treadmill, Kella and Rain whip their heads around and look like they’re preparing to hop down and help him. They hesitate, though, exchange a look, and face forward again, still running. I can’t see either one of them very clearly with Cardyn in between us, but I think Rain might be crying.
Down at the far end of our line, Brohn and Karmine exchange similar looks. Karmine keeps running, but Brohn doesn’t. Instead, he tears off his own mask and leaps down from his treadmill. Like Terk, he stumbles, but he doesn’t fall. He staggers over on shaky legs to kneel down beside Terk. I catch Karmine gazing in my direction from down the line. He shrugs and detaches the mask and defiantly peels off the sensor pads on either temple. Leaping from his treadmill, he lands awkwardly and lurches over to help Brohn tend to Terk. To my left, Cardyn does the same.
Looking over my shoulder to see how they’re all doing has thrown me into a wobble. My left foot clips against my right heel, and in a split-second, the world goes upside down. I spin off the treadmill, fall down, and roll for ten feet before sliding to a painful stop on the cold hard floor.
Maybe out of boredom, or maybe because she wants to help me, Kella detaches herself and hops down from her treadmill. She’s breathing almost as hard as the rest of us and looks relieved to still be alive. She asks through a pant if I’m okay, and I tell her I am. She’s bent over with her hands on her knees and smiling up at us through sweaty strands of blond hair.
Amaranthine is the last of us to quit. In fact, she doesn’t quit. Instead, her body gives out.
While the rest of us are on the floor, gasping for air, and nursing our wrecked muscles, Amaranthine continues to
slog along, one desperate and exhausted foot after the other. We all call out to her, but she ignores us. And then, after a few more minutes of trying to keep up with the rapid whoosh of the white track, she collapses. The track-pad whips along, kicking her feet out from under her. Her head cracks against the hand-rail, and she crashes in a heap at the foot of the machine. I leave Terk and the others and rush over to her, sliding to a stop by her unmoving body.
“Manthy!” I call out. I give her shoulder a shake, and her eyes flutter open. I try to help her to a sitting position, but she shrugs me off and climbs slowly to her feet.
“Leave me alone,” she mutters. “I’m fine.”
Her faint voice and a reddish bruise forming above her eye say otherwise.
Leaving Terk on the floor to catch his breath and leaving Amaranthine alone as she’s asked, the rest of us mill around for a while. Still panting, we investigate the area where Hiller and the others left, but the door has either blended seamlessly into the wall or else disappeared completely. We pace the large open room and look for other doors or a hidden panel, anything that might help us get out of what’s become a nightmare of a situation. Then the lights go out, and we’re in total and absolute darkness with only the sound of the still-moving treadmill tracks to keep us company. It’s an eerie sound, the rhythmic hum of the tracks in this totally light-less room.
I’m trying to stay calm, but I’m physically wiped. My brain feels fuzzy, and I can’t think straight. Out of the pitch black, Brohn’s quaking voice calls out for us to take a breath and not move.
“It’s just dark,” he says. “That’s all. Other than tripping over the treadmills or each other, there’s nothing in here that can hurt us.”
