by Tarah Benner
What is taking so long? Bid Day ceremonies already push five hours — five hours of sweaty palms, tedious bidding procedures, and frayed nerves.
Finally, he begins calling names in alphabetical order.
There’s nothing like Bid Day. Each round of bidding lasts no more than two minutes — two minutes of the most intense scrutiny, where a person’s future is decided based on a single number.
Some recruits try to stand with confidence to show the senior leaders they’re a worthy investment. But as the bidding drags on and a group of strangers vies for their future, their faces get paler, and their shoulders sag lower. When the gavel hits the table to end the bids, some people cheer, and some people cry. So undignified.
I hear “Lyang, Sawyer” and see Sawyer’s shiny black bob bouncing up the aisle. She looks terrified — more scared than I’ve ever seen her.
“Sawyer Lyang has been pursuing the Health and Rehabilitation track, with a score of . . . ninety-four.”
I jump to my feet and whoop loudly. A few new Health and Rehab recruits nearby join in, but Sawyer zeroes in on my face. She looks ecstatic. A ninety-four is fantastic. She’s a lock.
“Let’s start the bidding at . . . sixty-five thousand.”
I cheer again. Sixty-five thousand is an unheard of starting bid for a new recruit.
“Sixty-five thousand,” says the woman from Health and Rehab.
“Seventy.” It’s the man from Information.
“Seventy-five.”
“Eighty.”
Of course Information would want Sawyer for the research branch, but the Health and Rehab woman is undeterred. “Ninety-five.”
I can’t stop the grin that’s spreading across my face. Even if Information has the funding to bid more than ninety-five thousand on one recruit, there’s no way Health and Rehab is letting her slip away.
“Ninety-five going once . . . twice . . . Sawyer Lyang has officially been recruited for Health and Rehabilitation.”
I scream and stomp my feet, attracting a few irritated looks from the end half of the alphabet still stewing in their own misery. Sawyer is glowing with pride as the undersecretary lowers the blood-red silk cord over her head. I’m smiling so hard my mouth hurts.
She walks down the side of the stage to shake hands with the woman who just bid on her, and when she sits down between two men in red scrubs, my heart swells.
Half the battle is over. We can still both get what we want.
The undersecretary blazes through the Ms and Ns. The longer the ceremony goes on, the faster the bids move. People shuffle in and out, bored by the lack of crying recruits and surprise upsets in the bidding.
One guy I know scores a sixty-two. He only receives one bid.
Soon there are just two people left to go before me.
I’m gripping the edge of my chair so tightly that angry red indentations are carved into my palms.
“Riley, Harper.”
I jump to my feet, nearly flipping my chair over in the process. My legs are asleep from sitting for three and a half hours. Despite my shaky legs, I reach the stage in seconds.
Did I run up here? The hall is quiet and still. Half the crowd has already dispersed. I glance around hoping to see Celdon, but he’s just a single particle in a cluster of white-clad bodies.
The metal steps groan a little as I step up. The platform feels impossibly high. I glance over at the senior leaders, my eyes settling on a dark-skinned man in a white suit with a severe goatee.
“Harper Riley has been pursuing Systems, with a score of . . . forty-six.”
Hushed whispers fill the hall, then silence.
I wait.
Nobody cheers or claps.
I’m sure I’ve heard it wrong. It sounded as though he said forty-six, when I know it had to be ninety-six.
Then the man in the white suit lifts the corners of his mouth in a short chuckle. He doesn’t move his paddle.
“Let’s start the bidding at . . . twenty-two thousand.”
My stomach hits the floor. I’m going to vomit.
Twenty-two thousand? I’ve never heard such a ridiculously low starting bid. It’s insulting. It has to be a joke.
“Twenty-two thousand,” says the scruffy man from ExCon.
My face burns with shame. A few snickers erupt from the pool of waiting recruits. There’s no way I’m going to spend my life doing manual labor outside the compound.
I glance at the man from Systems, but he doesn’t even blink. He’s lost interest and seems to be peeling the white backing off his paddle.
“Thirty thousand,” says a sharp female voice. I look over. It’s the woman from Recon.
This can’t be happening. I want to flee the stage.
“Thirty-five thousand,” says the ExCon man. It’s almost the end of the bidding ceremony. He has money to burn.
“Sixty thousand,” snaps the Recon woman.
My limbs are so hot, I’m sure I’m going to burst into flames. The murmurs are growing louder.
“Sixty thousand going once . . . going twice . . . Harper Riley has officially been recruited for Reconnaissance.”
The gavel hits the table, and suddenly the lights are much too bright. I don’t feel hot with nerves anymore. I feel cold and clammy. It’s as though someone has sucked all the oxygen out of the room.
Someone clears his throat across the platform. The undersecretary is standing at the other end, holding up a silvery-gray cord.
No. This isn’t right. I’m supposed to be in Systems. I killed that test. And even if I hadn’t killed it, I couldn’t have scored lower than a fifty. I don’t know anyone who’s ever scored that low. I didn’t even know that was possible.
My feet are moving somehow, and still no one has clapped for me. The twisted silk cord falls heavily onto my shoulders, and I stumble toward the opposite end of the stage.
As I step down from the platform, I catch a glimpse of blond hair off to my right. Celdon is standing in the crowd. He meets my gaze and shakes his head once as if to say, “What the hell happened?”
It’s customary to shake hands with the leader who places the winning bid, so I shuffle over to the cluster of chairs, trying to avoid the smug grin of the Systems leader.
The woman who bid on me is in her late twenties — the youngest one there, but old by Recon standards. When she stands, she’s so slight that she only comes up to my nose.
She has dark hair pulled back into a tight bun and severe, predatory eyes. The patches on her uniform tell me she’s achieved the highest rank in Recon. My brain supplies a name: Commander Jayden Pierce.
She thrusts out her hand, and I take it reluctantly. She crushes my knuckles.
I hate her immediately.
The undersecretary has already called another girl’s name, and I realize I have no clue where to sit.
I can’t go back to sit with the other higher-eds. I have to sit with my section. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a cluster of guys in gray outfits sitting near the back. Before I even make a decision, my feet are carrying me over there.
There are a few girls in the mix, but they’re all built like lacrosse players with a good twenty pounds of muscle on me. They give me an appraising look, and I take a seat next to a well-built guy with short dark hair.
He’s sitting with his long legs spread wide and his arms folded across his chest, as though he’s fed up with the ceremony. He has sharp cheekbones and a mouth that’s set in a permanent scowl. Not friendly.
When I settle back against the chair, I feel his eyes on me. He can’t be more than a few years older, but the patches on his uniform indicate he’s a lieutenant.
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He looks angry and slightly curious, but then he shifts his body away from me.
I ignore this obvious slight and stare straight ahead, trying not to cry. I drag in a deep breath to steady myself and focus on the last stragglers walking across the stage to receive their bids.
But no ma
tter how hard I try, I can’t shake the horrible mantra playing in my head: Forty-six. Failure.
A forty-six? How is that even possible? You’d have to be brain-dead to score that low.
As the last new recruit crosses the stage and takes the white cord — my white cord — the lieutenant leans over and mutters just loud enough for me to hear, “Welcome to hell, Cadet.”
four
Eli
After Systems plucks the last shaking, pitiful recruit, the undersecretary explains the rules of gap year: The recruits can take the time to prepare themselves for the section they’ve been placed in, begin training, or leave within thirty-six hours to try their luck at another compound.
I roll my eyes. Gap year is really a tier-two holiday. Tier-one kids have to start training immediately, and tier-three recruits are put to work.
He doesn’t spell out the implications of leaving the compound, but the message is clear: Once you leave, you can never come back.
I’ll be damned if any of my recruits spend gap year partying in Neverland. If Recon did that, we’d all be dead. There’s never enough time to train these kids as it is.
I get up to leave the crowded hall, and I realize several of the new recruits are trailing behind me like a brood of sad baby ducklings. They can’t know I’m overseeing training, but I’m the only commanding officer besides Jayden who attends these sick ceremonies.
I groan and lengthen my stride. Maybe I can lose them in the crowd.
The doors to the megalift don’t close fast enough. New recruits bounce into the corners of the lift like pinballs, and I spot seven of the dingy-looking gray cords.
Jayden snapped up at least thirty kids — way more than previous years — but they’re probably still wandering around the main hall, completely shell-shocked. They’ll meet their commanding officers later.
In my pitiful group, there’s a short girl with curly red hair and a shocking dash of freckles across the bridge of her nose, a dumb-looking boy the size of a linebacker, and a skinny burnout with copper hair dyed green sticking up in all directions.
A frail-looking girl with mocha skin is already crying silently behind the football player, and there’s a pale, flabby vampire kid with jet-black hair.
Next to him is the tiniest human being I’ve ever seen with a white-blond bob and a pale, heart-shaped face. Her clothes hang off her tiny frame, and her eyes are the size of doorknobs.
What a crew.
Then the linebacker shifts, and I see lucky number seven. It’s the girl who sat down next to me at the ceremony — the girl with long raven hair who was going for Systems but received a forty-six.
She’s leaning against the side of the lift with her arms crossed over her chest, holding me in place with fierce gray eyes framed by sooty lashes.
What’s the expression? If looks could kill.
And Harper Riley definitely wants me dead. I try to pull my eyes away, but her behavior just baffles me. I’ve punched cadets in the face for doing less than she’s doing now. It’s as though she’s silently daring me to tell her to drop and give me twenty.
She doesn’t look dumb — at least not a lethal forty-six-caliber dumb. Miles would say she’s hot.
But right now, all I see is arrogance, which is dangerous. They should really put that in the cadets’ permanent files.
The megalift dings, and I get out as fast as I can. I take a left, and the new recruits practically trip over their own feet to follow me to the stairs and down into the bowels of the compound.
The temperature drops almost instantly when we reach the Underground, and I turn down the tunnel to Recon. The motion-activated overhead lighting sputters and then dims. Sometimes I think Manufacturing produces a special brand of flickering yellow lightbulbs just for Recon.
Our footsteps echo down the deserted main tunnel, and I gesture to where it branches off to the rows of compartments.
“Welcome to Recon City,” I say. “Cadet living quarters are here. Lucky you. There’s another stairwell that’s a straight shot to Neverland. I suggest you lock your doors.”
It sounds like I’m joking, but I hope they know I’m serious. When I was a recruit, I went out one night and came back to find two guys shooting up in my room.
The tunnel widens, and the smell of bleach, sweat, and old mats drifts through the double doors. It smells like home.
“This is the training center. This is where you’ll report every day at oh-eight hundred. I do not tolerate lateness, and I do not train recruits who spend their gap year getting burned in Neverland.”
I eye Harper Riley. She’s giving me that look again.
I scowl. “You need to show up if you want to live. At the end of training, we will shove you out of those pretty airlock doors, and you will have to survive. I suggest — you pay — attention.”
They’re all looking at me in shock, as if this is all one big prank — as though this can’t possibly be their life.
Only Harper Riley and the redhead seem aware of what’s really going on. The redhead is wearing a sassy look that tells me she is not accustomed to taking orders.
Then she does something she shouldn’t. She lets out a nervous little snicker.
“What’s your name, Cadet?” I ask, stepping toward her so I tower above her slight frame.
The redhead swallows. Her peaches-and-cream complexion loses some color, and suddenly, she’s not so sassy. She looks caught between laughing and throwing up. Mission accomplished.
“Lenny Horwitz.”
“Something funny, Horwitz?”
“No.”
“O-kay.” I step over to the huge football player guy with the buzz cut and beady eyes. He’s already sweating and panting.
“And your name?”
“Bernard Kelso. But everyone calls me Bear.”
And then I hear it, though Lenny’s low whisper is barely audible: “What’s your name? Lieutenant Thunderdouche?”
I close my eyes. This can’t happen. I don’t care about being liked or respected, but they have to take this seriously.
I draw in a deep breath, preparing to unleash that part of myself I hate — the part of me that kicks fighters when they’re down and beats the shit out of people.
“My name is SHUT THE FUCK UP WHEN I’M TALKING, HORWITZ! I’m trying to SAVE YOUR FUCKING LIVES. If you don’t LISTEN . . . if you don’t TRAIN . . . you will DIE!”
I wheel around, and her pale face bleeds into such a deep crimson, I’m pretty sure she’s going to combust or have a heart attack.
“Is that fucking IMPORTANT ENOUGH for you?” I yell.
I lower my voice. “You don’t need to know my name. The ONLY thing I want to hear from you, cadets, is YES — SIR! Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir!” the other cadets parrot. All except for Harper Riley. I’ve lost my patience.
“Think you’re too good for us, Harvard?” I hear myself say.
What is wrong with me? I’m an asshole. That’s what.
For a second, I wonder if she’ll even understand the pre–Death Storm reference, but then her face glows red as six pairs of eyes snap onto her.
“No.”
“No?”
I take a step toward her. She’s at least five inches shorter than me, but it doesn’t feel that way as she stiffens her spine and levels my gaze. Either this girl is crazy, or I’m starting to lose my touch at intimidation.
“No.”
“No, what?” I growl.
“No . . . sir.” She elongates the last syllable with so much contempt I’m actually impressed. “And the name’s Harper. Harper Riley . . . sir.”
I grin before I can stop myself, but I twist it into a sneer. “Right. Harvard Riley. It’s that or ‘forty-six.’ Your choice.”
She glares at me and tosses her long ebony ponytail over her shoulder. That gesture almost unravels me. It’s so cocky and self-important that I can see she genuinely believes she’s been placed here by mistake. I drag in a deep breath, willi
ng myself not to scream at her.
“Harvard, I know you took the Systems exam, so you probably think you’re above all this. You probably don’t even know what Recon does. Let me enlighten you.”
I step away to get some distance and address all seven of my scared, green little ducklings.
“Forget everything you think you know about Recon. Two of you will not make it through training. By this time two years from now, at least three of you will be dead. Four years from now, all but one of you will be dead.
“If you’re very lucky, you might have a shot at retiring out. This year, Commander Pierce will be the first to retire out of Recon in five years.”
The big one called Bear looks as though he’s about to wet himself, so I try to soften my tone a little.
“I don’t tell you this to scare you. I tell you so you’ll train hard. You need to know the odds are against you. And radiation poisoning is the absolute last thing you should be worried about.”
I realize I’m pacing and stop, turning to look at them. “If you’re planning to transfer, leave now. I’ll see the rest of you at oh-eight hundred.”
All the cadets scatter, and for a few minutes, I wonder if I’ve overdone it. I give the same speech Jayden gave when I was a cadet, but if I scare them so much that they all transfer to the next compound, she’s going to kill me.
Once the tunnel is deserted, I let myself into Miles’s compartment and flop down next to him on the sagging couch. Miles doesn’t like heavy talks, and he always says the wrong thing, but when things get shitty, he’s the only one who can talk me down.
Miles’s eyes are fixated on the wall screen, where he’s playing one of those battlefield video games. His face is screwed up in concentration. As he shoots an invisible rifle, the virtual Miles fires on-screen, and the real Miles lets out a disturbing laugh.
Between the black eye and the swollen nose, he looks like a zombie. I’m sure Brooke wants me dead, but Miles won’t say anything about it. The two of us frequently got our asses handed to us in the Institute, and we’re so used to nursing a collection of cuts, bruises, and broken bones that battle scars barely register with us anymore.
