Age of Order

by Julian North

  My room consisted of half of the single bedroom in our home. A sliding door separated my portion from Mateo’s. He had the window, but I didn’t mind. I liked the quiet. Aba slept on the couch in the living room, even though this was her place. She had worked just about every day of her life to own it, earning a crap wage as a clerk at the city ration dispensary. But she had a job, and that meant we had a place to live, heat in the winter, and food to eat. She paid taxes, so we could go to school. She dutifully used her single vote allocation every election. In the eleven years I had lived with her there was not a single day where she had complained about anything.

  I lay down gingerly on my bed and whispered out a message to Kortilla, letting her know I had survived my initial encounter. My body ached and Aba’s words still stung. I knew she was disappointed in me, even if she never said it. I just didn’t know why.

  From the day that we came to live with her, after Mom died, up through today, Aba had never once told me what she expected of me. She told Mateo and me only one thing: “Go succeed.” I still didn’t know what that meant.

  I drifted off to sleep quickly, and slept longer than I had in ages. The delicious aroma of bacon jolted my eyes open. Smelling meat cooking in our house was like seeing an elephant on the street—it just didn’t happen. I dragged myself into the den to find Mateo standing in the kitchen, gaping at the stove. A small fire had broken out in the pan. I bolted into the kitchen, knocking my taller, more solid brother aside. I grabbed a dented cover from one of the wall cabinets and covered the pan. Smoke flooded out from the uneven edges of the lid.

  “Get it out of there!” Mateo urged. “That’s real bacon!”

  I lifted the cover, sucking in acrid smoke. Quickly, I slid the rashers onto the plate that had been laid out beside the stove.

  “Burned, but salvageable, I think. You can’t let the real stuff get too hot. The fat catches fire. It’s not like fabricants.”

  My brother regarded me with a guileless grin and twinkling eyes that had no business on his face, given what he had put me through.

  “I got the eggs right though,” he said indicating a plate full of fluffy scrambled eggs that looked like they had been taken from a net simulation.

  “You rob a bank down in Manhattan?”

  “When I walked in, the first thing I saw were four eggs and a heap of fresh-cut bacon on the counter, calling to me like a rooster. I guess Aba was in a good mood. I haven’t seen real stuff like that around here since Christmas.”

  Fury at Mateo’s obliviousness mixed with a wave of gratitude as I thought about those precious items. Had Aba really left them for me?

  “Out of here.” I pointed in the direction of our small table adjacent to the kitchen.

  I grabbed the eggs and bacon, along with two more plates, and put them on the table between us. Hunger trumped conversation. We made short work of the rare feast. The real stuff satisfied—salty and greasy. Fabrications just didn’t taste the same.

  I had my fill before Mateo finished. I took the opportunity to watch him as he shoveled eggs into his mouth, barely chewing between bites. I understood why people liked him. He had sculpted features molded onto an open, expressive face that made it easy to believe you were seeing into his soul. The opposite of me. His eyes were just a shade lighter than mine, but far warmer. Only someone who knew him his whole life would’ve noticed the slight yellowing at the edge of his eyes, a frame that was not quite as hardy as it had been a few years ago, an occasional tremor in his hands that easily could have been dismissed as clumsiness. But I had lived with Mateo every day of my life, and I knew what happened to people around his age when they had that look. As sure as the sun rose in the east, it was the Waste. It would eventually claim him, unless I did something about it.

  “Tell me about your evening in Manhattan,” I said, impatient with the pace of his eating.

  Mateo looked up with infuriating sincerity, as if he had no idea why I could be angry. He wiped some egg from his mouth with his sleeve.

  “Good times,” he declared with merriment that made me want to reach across the table and strangle him. “Those black boots from the Authority were so focused on that pastor and his sheep on the North Bridge that they never expected us at the Broadway crossing. Zipped by them, under the monitors, onto the streets. We split up—dozens of us, riding every old gas guzzler we could find. Hell, I don’t even know where some of those boys came from. Not Corazones even, most of them, so the word is spreading. Surveyor drones came in from above, but not enough. Those gasoline engines haul. I got into the heart of the place. Past the Vision Quad. Right down to their private, snob-only streets on the east side. I even got to Central Park. Reminded me of when Mom used to take us there. Saw those green trees, and scared the hell out of some highborn kids with their nannies and familiars.” He laughed, sounding like a child bragging about a goal in a football game instead of someone involved in a life-or-death chase.

  My blood sizzled. “And what the hell good did that do anyone? Except bring the friggin’ Authority’s machines here, shooting at everyone who had nothing to do with your stupid, hopeless games.”

  Chagrin erupted on Mateo’s face as he contemplated the consequences of his actions, probably for the first time since it had happened, but it faded as quickly as it came. He stuck his chin in the air. “You’ve heard the way the government talks about us. That Orderist Chairman’s hints about ‘long-term solutions’ and ‘prosperity through order.’ We’re all dead if we don’t do something.”

  “I’m not dead! Kortilla’s not dead, neither are her parents. We’re living just fine. We don’t need you getting us killed, or corrected. Or yourself either.” My face burned as I unloaded on him.

  Mateo looked away. “Sorry you got hit.” Then he tacked on, “I thought I taught you to run faster than that.”

  I didn’t laugh at his attempt at a joke. I stared in hard silence until he faced me again.

  “You are living, Dee, but only as much as they let you. You and Kortilla have got people with jobs—crap ones with the gov or fixing overused clothes like Kortilla’s mom, or whatever—so you’ve got a roof over your head and food. For now. But most don’t. The highborn talk about merit, bettering yourself, democracy, but it’s all crap. A rich man’s got a vote allocation of a thousand, and Aba’s got one, because she pays less tax. They get their own streets, their own parks, their own police, their own special net. Then they complain about the burden of the low Aptitude Tiers of society. They make the rules, and they’re stacked against us. It was never supposed to be that way. You do great in school, sure, but you’ll never get into one of those fancy colleges. Even if you did, you couldn’t pay for it. You’ll never get out of here playing by their rules.”

  “I’ll get where I need to be,” I told him, even though I wasn’t sure I believed it anymore. “And I don’t need a huge townhouse, three vacation homes, and ten servants to be living, Mateo. I got people. Right here in the barrio, I got ’em. And I want to hang on to them. All of them.” Emotion crept into my voice at the end, but my brother didn’t notice.

  “They’ve taken everything away from us—everything. They killed Dad, they killed Mom. One way or the other, they killed her. They take whatever they want, leave us the dregs, and tell themselves it’s what we deserve. Well, I’m not going to just let them. That’s what got us here—people who let it happen. Mom told me not to give in, and I’m not.”

  I saw the pain on his face and swallowed hard. I reached for his cheek with my hand. Principled. Intelligent. Naive. My brother. “Listen, Mateo. We’ll find a way to fix you. I know I can get—”

  He snapped back from my grasp with a viper’s quickness. “Ain’t nothing to fix. We all got fuses burning. Mine might be quicker, might not.” He got up and took a quick backwards step towards the door. “I came to make sure you were okay. I should’ve known a little correction pellet couldn’t break your stubbornness. I ain’t done with those richos.”

  Then he w
as gone.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  I trotted onto the outdoor track located behind the Inocensio Basanova School of Bronx City, known in official nomenclature as Public School 62. Coach Darwin and several of my emerald and white-clad teammates acknowledged my presence with reticent nods in my direction, but otherwise left me alone. They knew my routine. They knew I would win my race. They didn’t know I’d been whirling under the punishing influence of a correction pellet a little over twenty-four hours ago. But that didn’t matter. No excuses.

  The dilapidated hulk of the school building looming over the cracked asphalt track betrayed every one of its nearly hundred years of existence, the facade consisting of more fabricated patches than original brick. Inside, a withered interior of crumbling halls and dingy classrooms accommodated thousands of students, no more than two dozen of whom had bothered to bestir themselves out of bed on a clear Sunday morning to sit on the plastika bleachers and watch our team run around a big oval. I didn’t care. I didn’t run for them.

  Most of the runners were older than me—seniors or juniors. I was also one of only two girls on the track. The gender-equality laws prohibited separate boys and girls teams. I rather liked the change. I preferred to beat people who expected to beat me.

  I caught a few of our competitors from PS 155 and PS 188 checking me out, whispering to themselves. The trophies I’d earned from being the undefeated Bronx City champion for the past three years lay in some nearby landfill, but everyone who ran in BC had heard of me. People who hadn’t raced against me still thought they could beat me. They were wrong, bad ankle and all.

  Kortilla’s silky dark eyes flashed at me from the stands. I couldn’t help smiling.

  You woke up on a Sunday? I asked with eyes and brows.

  She gave an exaggerated yawn in reply. I continued my warm-up, suddenly feeling far less stiffness or pain. I thought back to my conversation with Mateo the day before. Did it matter where I lived if I had people like Kortilla? Of course, I didn’t have the Waste ravaging my body. At least not yet.

  A short siren burst informed everyone that the meet would begin shortly. I took my place among my teammates, each of us dressed in green with a silly gopher emblazoned on our shirts. The rodent’s beady eyes and off color reminded me of a leprechaun high on Z-Pop.

  I watched my teammates compete as I awaited my opportunity to run. We got smoked in the two hundred meter, with our best runner finishing fourth. We didn’t do much better at four hundred meters, having a single runner come in third. I usually ran multiple distances, as well as doing cross-country, but Coach Darwin was new, and I hadn’t convinced him to permit me that privilege. I hadn’t pushed the issue. Spots on the team were precious; just because I was good didn’t mean my teammates wouldn’t knife me in the halls. As I tried to focus on the competition, my spider-sense told me someone had eyes on my back. And not friendly eyes, like Kortilla’s, but the kind that made me squirm.

  I jerked around to see a tall suited figure standing in the front row of the bleachers, his chrome eyes fixed on me, his hair an unnatural flaxen that might have been considered stylish among the Manhattan set. In the stands, within a sea of color ranging from coffee to charcoal, this porcelain-skinned stranger stood out like a fox in a litter of kittens. I glanced at Kortilla, who acknowledged my bafflement with her own. A sharp whistle signaled that it was time to line up for my primary event, the fifteen-hundred-meter run.

  I took my place on the starting line wondering what the gringo wanted. I reasoned that it probably had something to do with the protest. Or Mateo. I tried to clear my mind and prepare to race. I took careful note of my competition. There was only one other girl, along with half a dozen boys of various shapes, ages and sizes. We all bolted at the sound of the starter’s pistol.

  The fifteen hundred was my favorite distance because it required you to excel at both speed and endurance. Races of four hundred meters or less were just sprints, with the one hundred meter too often being determined by who could get the best start. Blink and it was over. But the fifteen hundred was a metric mile—three and three-quarters laps around the track so you needed speed, but you couldn’t go full throttle the whole way, or you would burn yourself out. It was about being patient, managing your energy so you were in a position to sprint at the finish. I loved coming from the second or third position during that last lap, releasing speed that no one thought I could possibly have left.

  I hadn’t had a chance to research the other teams. I’d missed practice in order to fulfill my dream of being tortured by highborn chemicals, so I ran this race using my usual strategy: pacing myself with the next fastest runner, who happened to be a dusky-skinned boy with long, rangy legs and a shaved head, wearing the crimson dragon of PS 188. I let him pull ahead of me on the first lap, feeling the presence of two other runners over each of my shoulders. One of them was the girl. No way she could beat me, but I was rooting for her to take second.

  The PS 188 guy set an aggressive pace. He had long, gliding strides that ate up distance and saved energy. My legs didn’t have his reach or power, so I was burning more reserves than I wanted to keep pace. I heard some unsteady panting from behind as we finished the first lap. I wasn’t alone in pushing myself. My ankle ached, and there was some sluggishness in my legs, but I kept up. Mr. PS 188 stole a furtive glance over his shoulder. I winked.

  We took the second lap faster than I expected. The other runners dropped back far enough that only Mr. PS 188, the unnamed girl, and I were in serious contention. Mr. PS 188 pushed harder, but I kept pace, dogged as a street mutt. I kept close enough to ensure he stayed concerned about what I had left in my tank.

  With half a lap to go, it was just the two of us. Mr. PS 188 maintained his impressive speed, but I liked my position—just a stride behind. We were running out of track. A split second before I made my move, he took off with a burst of speed I hadn’t expected. I dashed forward, feeling some panic. I was fast, but even I needed some time to make up the gap between us; the finish line loomed perilously close. I reached inside for my cold place, but couldn’t find it at first. I gritted my teeth: no way this guy beats me. A grunt of frustration escaped my lips. I could almost feel the smile on Mr. PS 188’s face. That’s when I found it: my lair, my chilled control room. There was a pool of essence there—energy I could draw upon. I drank in the power until the fatigue faded, my breathing steadied, and my legs felt fresh again. This was what I lived for. This was mine.

  I ran like a one-hundred-meter sprinter, my knees firing like pistons. Mr. PS 188 cried out when I drew even. The finish line beckoned no more than a dozen strides ahead. But that was all I needed to put him away. I streaked ahead. I didn’t look at him or the judge as I crossed the finish line. Hearing Kortilla shout “Vamos!” at the top of her lungs was all I needed. The other girl in the race finished third, sweat soaking her indigo uniform. She gave me a thumbs up. I nodded back.

  By the time I returned to my place among my teammates, my heart rate had returned to normal, but my foot pulsed angrily. I could temporarily turn off pain using my cold place, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t hurt myself. Indeed, without pain, it was easy to make an injury worse, and I had just done so.

  I approached Coach Darwin. He looked like what he was: a former linebacker whose body had fallen into the perils of middle age. “I gotta get some icy stuff for my foot.”

  It took a few seconds before he turned to look at me. “Nice race,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “You got pushed more than you expected at the end.”

  “And I pushed back,” I replied, intending to sound confident. “I’ve got to go inside.”

  Coach arched a brow at me. “So you don’t feel you need to practice, and you don’t need to stick around to support your teammates? Track is a team sport.”

  I caught myself before I rolled my eyes. Coach didn’t know me yet. I was afraid he was beginning to think I was someone that I didn’t want to be. “I know, Coach. The explanati
on for both is the same. I’ll tell you all about it. And I’ll be here for the team, I promise. But I need to put something on this before it gets too swollen. Please?”

  He sized me up as if evaluating a race horse. “Go.”

  I waved to Kortilla as I limped past the stands and headed for our locker room. We didn’t have much, but there were some chemical cold packs in there. Coach might have bought them himself. The dark-suited man watched me walk past. I had forgotten about him. He followed me as I headed towards the school building.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Machado—may I speak to you?” He pronounced my name so it sounded more like ‘Munch-add-oh’ but his other words were crisp Manhattan English.

  I could’ve run away, but it didn’t seem like that would help the situation. “It’s Mach-a-do,” I told him as I turned.

  “Got it.” He didn’t hide his impatience. “We’ve been trying to contact you. You haven’t been in school for the past two days. And your viser is offline.”

  “I had a little accident. Happens around here.”

  “Ah, I see.” He actually had no idea what I was talking about. Kortilla was creeping up behind him. My eyes told her to back off for now. “I’m here with very exciting news for you.”

  I huffed at him, but inwardly I was relieved he wasn’t with the Authority. My best guess, based on the clothes, creepy eyes, and modified hair, was a U-date service. They occasionally combed the high schools, looking for candidates for their high-paying customers. Best to get this over with quickly. My foot hurt. “What?”

  “My name is Christopher Howards. I represent the Tuck School in Manhattan. Due to an unexpected development, we have a slot available.” He hesitated for a moment, his back stiffening. “I’m pleased to extend to you an offer of admission to join this year’s fall class.”

  I gaped. My mind raced, searching for the gimmick. I had heard of the Tuck School, of course. Everyone in the Five Cities had. It was the highest of highborn institutions. Even the elite families of Manhattan struggled to get their little ones in there. It cost more than Aba earned in a decade to go there for one year, not that cost mattered to the richies who attended.