CENTER 82 (RATION)

by Christina J Thompson

  “Well?” the ration called out. “What do you see?”

  Andreas leaned back and shook her head in disbelief.

  “You were right,” she said, stepping towards the restraint platform. “The stain isn’t finding any of the tags in compound seven to react with. Stay on your side.”

  Ayn could feel an uncomfortable lump forming around the puncture site, and he gave an exaggerated groan as he glanced at the clock. It was almost five—time for another dose of serum.

  “The serum works on me, you know,” he told her. “Just because the rules say that you’re not supposed to waste it on test subjects doesn’t mean you can’t give me some.”

  She shook her head.

  “Your ankle is the only reason you’re not causing problems for me, ration. I’m not going to help you heal.”

  “Then I won’t tell you anything else about David’s work,” Ayn countered. “Serum is the only thing that helps with the pain, Andreas.”

  She narrowed her eyes, hesitating for a moment, then she turned on her heel and stepped towards the cabinet.

  “One dose,” Andreas hissed, returning with a vial. She injected him with the serum, and he grimaced as he waited for the burning sensation to fade.

  “So do you have what you need?” he asked as she set the syringe down. “Will it be enough proof to present at this conference thing?”

  Andreas’ heart raced with excitement as she left the ration’s side. It was more than enough proof, or at least she hoped it was.

  “I think so,” she answered, quickly scribbling down the test results. She reached for a file folder and walked over to the copier.

  “What are you doing now?” the ration called out as she placed the first page on the glass.

  Andreas scoffed under her breath at its curiosity, ignoring it as she set the next page in place. It just never stopped asking questions.

  “Well?” the ration prompted, and she sighed.

  “Preparing a packet for Base One,” she answered. “I need to protect my work just in case tomorrow doesn’t go according to plan.”

  The hallway intercom beeped, and she glanced up to see a young man standing outside the one-way glass.

  “Dr. Trent called for a courier?” his voice crackled out. Andreas ran to the door and opened it, waving him inside.

  “Dr. Trent isn’t here right now,” she said. “I have the message he needs delivered, it goes to Dr. Josie Dietrich at Base One’s ration development lab.”

  “We only have two functioning messenger drones right now,” the courier replied. “Both are en-route to other facilities, but they’re expected to arrive back tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s okay, you’ll need to hand-deliver this one,” she told him. “I can’t wait for a drone.”

  The courier eyed her.

  “Doctor, it takes a week to get to Base One on foot. The drone can make it there in a day, your message would arrive faster if you wait until tomorrow―”

  “It’s sensitive information, it’s not safe inside the facility. You are to personally give this file to Dr. Dietrich, and I expect you to cut the trip down to four days.”

  “That’s impossible,” the courier protested. “I can’t make that kind of time just travelling at night!”

  Andreas rolled her eyes as she reached for a small box, opening the lid and taking out a syringe.

  “Then I suppose you’ll have to travel during the day, too.”

  “It’s too hot for that―ow!”

  She stabbed him in the arm before he could react, ignoring his cry of pain and handing the box to him.

  “There are over six days’ worth of nutrition doses in here,” she told him. “They’ll get you through the extra exertion of daytime travel, take three per day until you reach Base One. You need to leave here immediately.”

  “I’ll also need an authorization form,” the courier replied, rubbing his arm. “They locked TPM’s exit door and posted guards there to check everyone―I guess they think the missing girl went out that way.”

  “You aren’t going through TPM,” Andreas said. “That’s on the other side of the building and I just told you that I expect you to leave immediately.”

  The courier scoffed.

  “I can’t go without food and water―”

  “Obviously,” she huffed sarcastically. “The courier’s office still has one-day bundles of emergency supplies on hand, correct?”

  The courier nodded, and she grabbed a requisition form and quickly filled it out.

  “Take two bundles with you. Center 78 is the first resource center you pass along the way, you’ll get your main supplies from there if you give them this. My access code is written right here, use it to get out through the old delivery door behind the ration development wing.”

  He took the form from her, glancing at the code written at the top before folding it and putting it in his pocket.

  “Is there anything else?”

  Andreas shook her head, sealing the copied pages into a folder and handing it to him.

  “Don’t stop for anything or anyone,” she said. “I mean it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the courier barked, giving a slight bow as he turned. Instead of running out through the main door to the lab, he navigated to the service corridor in the back; he disappeared, and Andreas heard the ration sigh.

  “What now?” it asked.

  She pursed her lips.

  “Now I need to finalize my presentation for tomorrow,” she said, moving to sit beside the restraint platform. “I think we stand a good chance of convincing the others to agree with us.”

  Ayn raised a brow as she sat down next to him.

  “You keep saying ‘we’ and ‘us’ as if I’m actually part of this.”

  “I’m trying to keep you alive,” she replied, crossing her arms. “I need your help to do it, so yes, that makes you part of this.”

  “You’re trying to get answers,” he shot back. “That’s what this is about, nothing more. I’ll be killed once you’re done with your live study.”

  She shrugged.

  “Yes, that’s true, but as I told you before, it will be a while before that happens.”

  “I promised Amber that I would follow her.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Andreas told him. “You and I both know that you can’t keep that promise.”

  “I can if you help me. She’s all alone out there, Andreas.”

  “Then she shouldn’t have left. Regardless of whether you can talk or think, you’re still a ration, and I will do whatever is necessary to maintain the integrity of my work. Now, we need to keep going with David’s research.”

  Ayn whispered a curse, straightening his head and focusing his gaze on the ceiling above him.

  “Tell me what you want to know.”

  ≈

  Brian swallowed hard as Darren finished explaining everything to him. He was too surprised to feel angry about Em’s attempt to separate him from the sympathizers, and he frowned with worry as he shook his head.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” he mused. “I can’t imagine why anyone would want that code.”

  “Neither can I,” Darren agreed, scooting back on the bed and leaning against the wall. He drew his knees up to his chest. “She said nothing was going to happen to us, though.”

  “I’m so very reassured,” Brian snorted as he rolled his eyes. “The woman’s insane, Darren.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out when she tried convincing you to kill Amber.”

  “And if she’s willing to write Amber off that fast, what’s to say she doesn’t have the same thing planned for the whole facility?”

  “I don’t think so,” Darren replied. “She was concerned about the eradication virus getting here, she said we have to move before that happens because it will kill everyone except the administration and researchers. She wouldn’t care about that if whatever she was planning was go
ing to hurt us.”

  Brian raised a brow.

  “You really trust her enough to risk that?”

  “Of course not,” Darren scoffed. “I don’t trust her at all, but I don’t see how we have much of a choice. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in this place, and we both know that nothing will change until the ration program is eliminated. She said that whatever this plan is will definitely end it.”

  “I still think we need to just set fire to the ration dome or something―”

  “It’s made of concrete, Brian, it’s not going to burn down. We already talked about that.”

  “The stuff inside the ration dome isn’t concrete. The piers are mostly plastic―”

  “How are we going to get in? There are guards everywhere now!”

  Brian crossed his arms.

  “Fine. So we just do whatever Em wants and hope she’s not crazy enough to kill us all?”

  “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for the last few months?” Darren sighed sarcastically. “I don’t see how this is any different.”

  “Maybe because she hasn’t actually told you why this time! We knew exactly what was going on with sabotaging the piers, but this is different!”

  “Again, what choice do we have? I can’t just tell her no, Brian! What if this really works? Less than two months, and we could finally be free—no more injections, no more Smith!”

  “Or we could be dead.”

  Darren made a face.

  “That’s definitely true, but that could happen anyway. I don’t trust her, Brian, but I think we should do this.”

  Brian clenched his teeth and leaned back in the chair, staring up at the ceiling as he tried to think.

  “You said there’s a delivery coming?”

  Darren nodded.

  “Tomorrow night. Midnight.”

  “Let’s see what it is first, how about that? She said it’s important, right?”

  “Yeah, but meeting the delivery doesn’t mean I’ll be able to tell what it is. It could be wrapped up or something, and I don’t know if the couriers will let me open it.”

  “Worth a shot, isn’t it?” Brian asked. “She said you have time to get the codes, may as well see if this delivery gives us an idea of what’s going on.”

  Darren hesitated for a moment, then shrugged.

  “I guess.”

  “Good,” Brian said, straightening in his seat. He pursed his lips. “Where do you think Amber went?”

  “Probably back home,” Darren answered. He pushed himself to the edge of the bed and moved to stand. “Where the hell else would she go?”

  “She could’ve headed for the coast.”

  “Maybe, but either way, they’ll catch her eventually unless she’s lucky enough to die first. They sent a group to her settlement earlier, and if they find her, it’s not going to be good.”

  “I wish I knew what she needed those clothes for,” Brian mused as he stood up. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Nothing about that girl made any sense,” Darren said, opening the door. “She was a mystery, that’s for sure. Let’s go, it’s almost time for dinner.”

  Brian stared down at his feet as he stepped out onto the walkway and headed for the cafeteria.

  “Well, I hope she’s okay,” he muttered under his breath. “Wherever she is.”

  †‡†

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Ayn glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight―Amber already had almost a full day’s head start, and he flexed his foot, focusing on the pain that ebbed through his ankle. It felt much better already, but it wasn’t ready to run on yet.

  He shifted his attention to Andreas. She was dragging a cart towards the platform, and he cringed when he caught a glimpse of what was sitting on top of it. He knew exactly what she was planning to do.

  “I thought the cerebrospinal fluid was enough proof for the conference,” he said, his voice thick with nervousness as he eyed her. “You don’t need a brain biopsy right now.”

  “I don’t need one for the conference,” she corrected. “I still need a sample to send to Center 81 for analysis, the courier said the messenger drone will be here tomorrow morning and I want the sample ready when it gets here. I’ll be quick, I just need a few capillary cells.”

  Ayn swallowed hard as Andreas picked up a steel brace shaped like a helmet.

  “Easy for you to say,” he retorted. “You’re not the one getting cut into.”

  “You said David performed this same test, correct? You know what’s coming, you’ll get through it.”

  Ayn made a face.

  “And you said you’ve never done this kind of work before, Andreas, you don’t know what you’re doing!”

  “It’s not complicated.”

  “It’s my brain! You don’t need this yet―”

  “It’s a simple procedure, ration. The vessel I’m targeting is right on the surface, I can’t miss it. I’ve done this hundreds of times during dissections―”

  “This isn’t a dissection! You could kill me if you screw up!”

  “Then it would be in your best interests to hold very still,” she told him. “I’ll go as quickly as I can.”

  “Just do it tomorrow,” Ayn pleaded. “You’re tired―”

  “I’m doing it now, so unless you want me to call someone in here to hold you down, I’d suggest you accept it. I’ll give you more serum when I’m done to help with the pain.”

  His mind raced; the procedure would be excruciating, but she hadn’t left his side at all in the last seven hours. He was already an hour overdue for another dose if he was going to stay on track.

  “I can’t risk you moving,” Andreas told him as she lifted the brace towards his head. “There are a couple screws that will need to be set into your skull―”

  “I can do it without the screws,” Ayn interrupted. “Just use the straps, I won’t move. David did the same thing on me before he knew the paralytic didn’t work.”

  She hesitated.

  “If you even twitch―”

  “I stayed still enough to keep David from realizing that I could feel everything, I’ll be fine as long as you don’t end up killing me in the process. Just hurry the hell up and get it over with.”

  Andreas didn’t answer. She set the brace in place and quickly tightened the straps, and within moments, Ayn’s head was locked immobile against the platform. She reached for a syringe and injected the contents into his vein; he winced in pain as he felt his whole body flood with burning cold, then she picked up a handheld device and placed it on the side of his head.

  “I’m beginning now,” she warned. “Don’t move.”

  Ayn’s stomach turned with dread, and he did his best to force himself to relax as he felt the first agonizing slash of her blade pierce his scalp. He clenched his fists as a warm trickle of blood ran down the back of his head.

  “This next part will be unpleasant,” Andreas muttered as the scalpel clattered on the tray beside the platform. Ayn held his breath against the curse that rose up in his throat, steeling himself as he felt the sickening reverberation of the drill on his skull. He counted his heartbeats; part of him wished he could pass out from the pain, but the other part was too afraid that if he did, he would never wake up.

  The drill stopped, and his skin prickled with terror as Andreas fell completely silent.

  “Done,” she announced a moment later, and Ayn gasped with relief as a tear ran down the side of his face. He felt her slide the flap of skin she had cut open back into place. “I’ll get the serum, ration, just let me unbuckle these first.”

  She began releasing his head from the straps; his breath caught in his throat as he tried to calm down, and he heard her scoff.

  “No need to be so dramatic about it,” Andreas snapped, stepping away to retrieve a vial of serum. “You kept yourself under control when David did the test, I don’t see why this is any different.”
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  Ayn closed his eyes for a moment, sorrow filling his heart. He remembered that test—he had almost hoped to die back then, to escape from the miserable existence he had suffered in the lab, but things were different now. Now, he actually mattered to someone.

  “That was before I knew Amber,” he whispered mournfully.

  Andreas finished the injection, then she took a step back and put her hands on her hips.

  “It’s interesting how much the keeper has affected you,” she mused. “You were only with her for a few months, yet you seem to have built an entire imagined sense of identity around her.”

  “Imagined?” Ayn echoed in disbelief. He turned his head, ignoring the pounding ache in his skull as he glared at her. “That’s what you call it? Really?”

  “What else would I call it? You’re not human, yet you’ve given yourself human attributes―”

  “What about me makes me less than human, hmmm? Just because I was grown in a lab? Because if that’s your determining factor, that makes you just the same as me!”

  “The ration program’s edict classifies you as a human derivative,” Andreas replied. “Rations aren’t the same as we are, it’s that simple.”

  “And because someone in authority decreed it, it must be true,” Ayn scoffed. “The board decreed that David was a sympathizer, remember? So I suppose that must be true since it came from an authority!”

  “That was different!” she snarled, narrowing her eyes. “They were wrong!”

  “And this is wrong!”

  She paused for a moment as if trying to control herself, then she smiled.

  “There’s a lifetime’s worth of studies in that mind of yours,” she said lightly. “I think your advanced level of intelligence and comprehension are going to be the next phase of my testing.”

  Ayn felt a lump appear in his throat.

  “I need to go after Amber. I know you don’t see me as anything more than a science project, but you have to understand how much she means to me―”