CENTER 82 (RATION)

by Christina J Thompson

  Ayn felt the lift hesitate as it prepared for its downward descent, his blood pulsing loudly in his ears as he began to count the seconds in his mind.

  73, 72, 71, 70…

  Amber swallowed hard as the lift slowly began to lower. Her foot started tapping quietly, an unbearable anxiety rising up in her heart at the thought of seeing the poor creature that occupied the slot. The metal arms of the lift creaked beneath the weight of the platform, the whir of the motor shrill and piercing, and she braced herself.

  46, 45, 44, 43…

  Ayn could feel tears welling up in his eyes, and he steeled his nerves, forcing a blank expression. He almost felt scared; he could hear the curious whispers of the people below him, and if he lost control, they would all bear witness. He wouldn’t even be able to risk a quick glance at Amber’s face, and he focused on the ceiling, mentally preparing himself. A different kind of worry flashed through his mind an instant later—she wouldn’t be able to show a reaction, either, and he could only hope she would be able to stifle her shock.

  Only a few more seconds.

  26, 25, 24, 23…

  Amber cringed; the lift was only a few feet above her head now. She glanced down and sighed, meeting the lab assistant’s gaze for a moment.

  “Wait!” Noah suddenly screamed, and everyone whirled around to look at his panic-stricken face. Jen reacted instantly, pressing a red button beside her chair.

  Ayn’s heart sank as the platform jerked to a sudden stop, his stomach knotting with despair. It had been too much to hope for. He closed his eyes as a sob rose up in his throat.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Noah?” Jen demanded. “What happened?”

  “They need to leave!” he snarled, his face turning red with anger as he gestured at the group. “They aren’t supposed to be here!”

  Jen crossed her arms defensively.

  “I decide what happens in this unit, Mr. Meyers, and I don’t appreciate―”

  “I don’t give a damn what you appreciate! No one is supposed to see the test subjects!”

  “Since when?” Paul asked, narrowing his eyes. Noah gave him a death glare.

  “Get out of here, dammit! Go on, before I report you!”

  Paul studied the man’s enraged expression for a moment, then he raised his hands in defeat.

  “No need to get angry, we’re going,” he said, quickly ushering the group out of the room.

  Ayn could hear the footsteps departing, and for a moment, he almost considered calling out. He clenched his teeth, forcing himself to stay silent. If there was any hope of escaping from this place, it wouldn’t happen if he revealed himself now. Andreas would put him under constant observation if he did that.

  The lift wheezed to life once more, lowering him the rest of the way down, but this time, it wasn’t difficult to muster an emotionless stare.

  “That was unacceptable,” Jen growled, her eyes flashing as Noah began securing the platform to a wheeled cart. “I won’t tolerate that kind of behavior in my unit!”

  “I wonder what the board would think about you tolerating unauthorized people!” he shot back. “Maybe we should find out?”

  She gave him a dangerous glare.

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Take it however you want,” Noah hissed. He stepped towards the door and cracked it open.

  Amber glanced back over her shoulder; she could see the lab assistant’s eyes peeking out through a crack in the door, watching as the group left, and she furrowed her brow in confusion.

  “Let’s go, people!” Paul called, waving for everyone to follow. “One more stop before lunch, come on!”

  “What was that about?” Amber asked, moving to his side as they walked through a corridor. Another tour group was passing by going the opposite direction, and he waited for them to leave before shaking his head.

  “Damn lab assistants,” Paul muttered under his breath, making a face as he shot her a glance. “A bunch of arrogant asses, that’s all. The assistants are nobodies, just researcher candidates who fail their qualifying exams at the end of training. Most of them are removed from the program when they don’t pass their tests, but a few are just barely smart enough to be good for something.”

  They stopped in front of another set of doors, and Paul raised his voice as he threw them open and stepped inside.

  “Here’s what you’ve all been waiting for,” he grinned. “Welcome to the ration dome.”

  A sickeningly bittersweet smell instantly filled Amber’s nose; it reminded her of the waste pits back home, but thankfully not quite as overpowering. She reached up, coughing as she covered her face and surveyed the massive room.

  Six lift machines were positioned around the perimeter, but unlike the one in lab ration storage, these weren’t stationary. Instead, they sat atop tracks that were cut into the floor, giving them the ability to move back and forth between the rows upon rows of piers. The piers in here were enormous compared to the ones in the incubation dome, and Amber tilted her head back as her eyes drifted up. They were unbelievably tall, stopping just short of the clear, domed ceiling above, and her lips moved as she silently counted the doors that marked each slot. Her stomach turned as she did the math—a hundred doors per pier, and nearly fifty piers in all. There were thousands of rations, thousands of people whose lives meant nothing to everyone in the world. Everyone except her.

  She could feel bile welling up in her throat, and she concentrated as she tried to keep a straight face. A sound caught her attention a moment later, offering a much-needed distraction, and she turned around, focusing on a strange, quiet creaking that seemed to be coming from the slots.

  “It’s the platforms inside,” Paul explained. “That’s the noise the rations make when they move.”

  He beckoned to her as he stepped towards the first pier.

  “Behind each one of these doors is a ration,” he said loudly. “Each slot is a self-contained housing chamber. Once the rations leave the incubation dome, they are transported here, where they remain until full-grown. Come take a look.”

  He pushed a button next to one of the lower slots. The door slid open, revealing a small ration lying on a platform. He was naked, and a purple-tinged light flickered on.

  “The light you’re seeing is a UV light. It replaces sunlight, and if you look to the left, you’ll see a small hole. An automated syringe delivers the ration’s supplements each day, and a conveyor system provides it with its food and water.”

  Amber felt tears well up in her eyes―this was the existence Ayn had suffered prior to being assigned to her family, this was the miserable version of life he had known. It was utterly heartbreaking, but what made it even worse was remembering the compassion he had shown her. Despite living in this nightmare, he had still managed to find room in his heart for someone as guilty as her.

  She cleared her throat as quietly as she could, trying to force herself to calm, but as a tear spilled over onto her cheek, she knew she was losing control. She backed away and quickly ducked around the corner of one of the piers, clenching her fists as she closed her eyes.

  “Stop,” she commanded herself, her teeth grating in her ears. “Stop, dammit!”

  Amber drew a measured breath, counting each passing moment as she willed away the lump that had appeared in her throat. The ache slowly began to fade, and just when she was sure she had managed to reign in her emotions, a sudden flash of movement caught her attention. Her head snapped around instinctively.

  She barely caught a glimpse of what looked like Brian’s figure darting between two of the piers, and she narrowed her eyes in curiosity as she moved forward. She reached the spot where she thought she had seen him and glanced around; he was gone, and she pursed her lips as she hesitated. She must have imagined it. She shrugged to herself as she prepared to return to the group, only to hear something quietly clatter on the floor in the row behind where she was standing.

  “
Brian?”

  Amber stepped around the corner and froze, her eyes instantly growing wide as Brian met her gaze. His hand was inside one of the slots, and he yanked back the moment he saw her, his dark face going pale. She could see a small, red object clutched between his fingers, and before she could blink, he had snapped it in two with one swift motion and shoved the pieces back inside the slot.

  “What…what are you doing?” Amber asked, taking a step closer. He didn’t answer—he looked utterly terrified, and as she studied his face, her mind flashed back to the night she had helped harvest Frank Green’s ration. The sad, horrified acceptance she was now seeing in Brian’s eyes reminded her of what she had seen in the ration’s during his final moments, except now, for Brian, she somehow knew that she was the one holding the knife.

  “Amber?” Paul’s voice called out, and she reacted without thinking. She spun on her heel, running right into him the moment she stepped out into the row.

  He gave her a strange look as he caught her in his arms, and Amber flashed a sheepish grin.

  “I…I wanted to look around,” she managed to say. “I couldn’t find you, I thought I got lost.”

  “I’d never let that happen,” Paul chuckled as he took her arm. “Come on, we’re done here. Time for lunch.”

  She allowed him to lead her towards the doors, resisting the urge to glance back over her shoulder as her mind raced. Brian’s nervousness made sense now, and as she thought about Darren’s worried, angry attitude during breakfast, she realized that this had to have been the reason. They had planned this, or at least Brian had—but what exactly had he done?

  Amber followed Paul out of the ration dome, ignoring his flirtatious banter as he led the group towards the cafeteria, and she finally stole a quick peek behind her. She frowned, but she wasn’t surprised―Brian was nowhere to be seen.

  †‡†

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Brian bolted the instant he was out of sight of the group, his heart pounding in his throat as he navigated through the halls. He couldn’t breathe; his vision had gone blurry, and he could feel cold sweat pouring from his skin. This was everything he had been warned about, the absolute worst mistake a sympathizer like him could make.

  He reached the other side of the ration development wing and headed for the lower levels, keeping to the shadows beneath the walkways as he forced himself to slow down. He felt like a million eyes were trained on him despite the fact that the wing was nearly empty at this time of day; usually, he only ventured here at night when the facility was quiet, but now he had no choice.

  Brian reached the bottom floor and stopped, giving a cautious look around before ducking under the staircase and reaching for a small grate that covered a vent in the floor. He slipped through, squeezing his shoulders in and pulling the grate back into place above him. The short ventilation shaft passed underneath the back wall to provide easy access to what lay on the other side, and within moments, he was climbing out of the floor in the old animal preservation wing.

  He dusted himself off, squinting in the dim as he waited for his eyes to adjust. This part of the facility had been completely abandoned shortly after the ration program had first started, and it seemed like most people had forgotten it existed. It wasn’t even included on any current maps of the facility; he had stumbled across a blueprint in one of the library’s record books months ago, which had led to his discovery of the secret vent beneath the stairs. In the time since, its secluded halls and rooms had served as both a meeting place and a refuge for him.

  The animal preservation wing’s basic design was almost identical to the others: walkways lined the rectangular perimeter of a wide, open space in the center, but instead of staircases to connect the floors, there was a spiraling ramp similar the one outside lab ration storage that was built into one corner of the wing. This one was much taller, though, tall enough to reach from the bottom floor where he was now standing all the way up to the fortieth floor high above.

  It was dark; the ball of solar lights was gone, its parts long-since scavenged to fix the lights in other areas of the facility, and tarps of plastic had been hung over the skylights on the ceiling to block out most of the light. Only a few streaks of sunlight managed to find their way around the ghostly, tattered edges, painting the space with an eerie pale reminiscent of winter dusk, but the thin beams weren’t strong enough to reach all the way down to where he was. The shadows suffocated them before then, infecting them with a cold, gray haziness somewhere around the middle levels and adding to the sense of foreboding that thickened the stale air.

  Brian ran towards the access ramp and began to climb, leaning forward against the incline. He was grateful for the shadows; the gated-off walkways of each floor he passed overlapped with the ramp’s structure, effectively closing it in on three sides and making him feel almost invisible. Only the narrow, outer section of each turn was open to the center of the wing, and unless someone was standing directly across from him on the other side, they would never see him.

  His ankles quickly started to burn from running against the steep angle, and within minutes, he was forced to pause to catch his breath. His chest heaved from exertion as he bent down, supporting himself on the thick, metal bars of the gate that blocked access between the ramp and this level’s main walkway. The facility had put the gates in place when the wing had first been closed, likely to ensure that even if someone managed to sneak into the area, they would be prevented from doing little more than climbing the ramp as he now was.

  Brian straightened and stepped towards the open edge of the ramp, a sense of despair washing over him as he stared out at the shadowed, barred doors of the rooms that lined each level below. That was another difference between this place and the other wings: there were no residential units here. These rooms almost looked like jail cells, which wasn’t very far from the truth—they had once been cages for livestock, but after the final extinction so long ago, there was no need for them anymore. Humanity was the only form of life that remained, and the world itself served as a cage for them.

  He could see a row of small holes lined up along the ramp’s edge, each one marking the placement of a railing that used to offer protection from the sheer drop mere inches away. A sudden temptation crept into his heart, and he took another step almost without realizing it. The tips of his shoes were now jutting out over the edge, and a shiver passed through his body as if his very being could sense the threat posed by the vast emptiness in front of him. The torture he would face when the administration discovered what he had done could be avoided right here and now, and the others would have no reason to worry that he had exposed anything in the process. He cursed under his breath a moment later and moved back. As much as he wished he had the courage to end it, he couldn’t bring himself to give up like that.

  Brian began to run again, stopping when he reached the fifteenth floor. His destination was on level eleven, but the only way to get past the gates that blocked access to the rest of the wing was on level fifteen. The open area where the railing used to be was wider here, and with the long reach afforded by his tall, lanky frame, he could lean out just far enough to grab hold of the spot where the metal walkway was bolted to the ramp’s concrete support wall. If he swung his body just right, he could pull himself over. It was a precarious maneuver―so far, he had been lucky, but successfully reaching the other side still came as a gut-wrenching surprise every time.

  Brian hugged the edge of the wall as he reached out, his left leg clinging to the smooth concrete beside him as if doing so would somehow offer protection from a fall. His fingers brushed against the walkway’s railing, and he held his breath, hearing his shoulder pop as he stretched himself to his limit. He glanced down. One convenient slip would send him plunging into the darkness…

  He let go of the wall the moment his grip was sure, and an instant later, he felt his foot make contact with the bottom of the walkway’s outer edge. He threw himself over the railin
g and rolled back into the shadow of the awning created by the floor above him, waiting for his heart to stop racing before crawling forward. Crossing to and from the walkway was the only time he was completely exposed, and despite the fact that he knew no one was there, he couldn’t help feeling a sense of paranoia. His eyes scanned back and forth, but from what he could tell, he was safe. He made a face as he scoffed under his breath—for now, anyway. For all he knew, Amber had already revealed him.

  The old feed storage room was located on the eleventh floor, and Brian hurried towards one of the many hallways that zig-zagged throughout the walls of the wing. Dim footlights ran the length of the floor on both sides of the hall; the light source was integrated into the endless network of wiring that snaked through every inch of the facility’s structure, and because part of the ration development wing’s wiring was routed through this one, the footlights remained working here even though all other power had been cut. In the dark, the faint glow provided just barely enough light to see by.

  The hall ended abruptly and split in two—to the left was a corridor that led to the wing’s old administrative offices, and around the corner to the right was a drab, gray door. There was an empty hole cut into the wall beside it, evidence that it had once required an access code, but the keypad had been removed years ago in a failed attempt to use the parts. The wiring had been damaged in the process, severing the link that had once connected all the intercoms throughout the facility, and fortunately for the sympathizers, the facility’s video surveillance had died at the same time. The intercoms were originally equipped with cameras that tied into the communication system, so the damage to one part of the system had inadvertently damaged the other.