I haven't liked Viv too much so far, but right now all I feel for her is gratitude.
We don't share food in the Directorate. It's not a rule, exactly, but we all know not to do it. Each person’s diet is specifically configured to their own parameters, factoring in genetics, age, gender, daily demands, and other metrics. If you eat someone else’s food, it messes up the whole program for both of you.
The machine hums, then spits out a small vegetable pallet.
“Well,” Viv sighs, “Don’t know if this is what you’re used to, but…”
“Thank you,” I say, taking it from the dispenser.
It is steaming and hot, and I am starving. My stomach rumbles. I take a bite and chew.
Viv shrugs.
As I eat, heavy footsteps tap from down the hall. Viv looks up to the source, and the mixture of relief and fear on her face makes me nervous all over again.
A stiff, deep voice calls to us as I take another large bite. “Is this the body?”
Chapter Seven
Evie
Two men in stiff dark suits stand behind me and Viv, blocking us off from the hallway. They’re still wearing their sunglasses. One has graying hair and generous features, matching his sides, which heave over the top of his belt. The other is tall and lean, with a buzzed head and a thin mouth. Neither smiles.
“Yes,” Viv replies.
I take another bite of the vegetable pallet, even though my mouth is still half full. Something tells me these guys aren’t going to be big on letting me take it with me, wherever we’re going. But hell if I’m not eating this entire thing.
“I’m sorry!” Tad huffs, coming into view behind them, half-jogging. “They didn’t wait! I told them to wait while I buzzed you!”
Viv, to her credit, maintains a calm front. I can’t tell if it’s an act or not. “It’s perfectly all right, Tad. I was expecting these gentlemen.”
“Oh. Okay.” He slows, his shoulders slumping. “I guess I’ll be up front.” He lingers though, staring at me until I look back. Then he nods pointedly to one of the Suits' lapels.
A shiny laminated badge is clipped to each of the Suits’ chests, with a broad green stripe across the top. These guys are Green Level.
Oh shit.
Greens are an elite branch of the Life Quality Management Department with high-level clearance. Highly selective. The qualifications seem to be intelligence and a talent for keeping secrets. Father works there. Gracelyn probably will, too, after her basic LQM training.
Tad is still staring, like he expects something from me. I have no idea what, though, and his wide eyes are only making me more scared. I shrug back at him and take another bite of vegetable. Try to ignore the terrible tug in my gut.
There is no actual reason to be so scared right now. This is simply the next step. Protocol. Nothing ever goes wrong when you follow protocol.
Besides, the Suits are the only ones who seem to have any idea of what to do.
I take another giant bite, shoving the rest of the vegetable pallet into my mouth. When I look up, Tad has turned away and is shuffling back to the front desk. I look away and force down the rest of my food.
“Ma’am, come with us,” the older one says. He doesn’t move his head as he talks. With his sunglasses still on, it’s impossible to tell who he’s looking at. But it seems safe to assume it's me.
“Yeah, okay.” I place the empty plate on the counter.
“Complete the protocol paperwork by the end of the day,” the taller one says. To Viv, I assume. “You and the others will have a special session with your mental health managers tomorrow. After that, this will all be over for you.”
Viv nods. She doesn’t look at me.
The Suits close in at my sides and each drop a hand on my shoulders. I jump in response to the sudden weight. “Let’s go,” one of them says.
They guide me down the hall. The pressure of their grip makes me feel cagey, but I fight the compulsion to shake them off. Show them you can go along, that you’re not trying to cause trouble. The Directorate does not tolerate troublemakers.
As we head outside and the door slides shut behind us, the ashy air fills my lungs, along with odors acrid and sweet, fatty and burnt, and the aggressive whir of ventilation fans floods my ears. I make the mistake of looking back and catch Tad's parting look. There’s a well of emotion rippling over his face. A pang of guilt seizes in my stomach, as if I’ve betrayed him. But the tension in his eyes isn’t anger. He looks afraid. For me.
The Departure Plant is the ugliest thing I have seen. A line of vans trail towards a flattened winding path through flattened dirt – none of the sidewalks or greenery that line the neighborhoods – towards a second building with tall smokestacks and dark clouds gathered over them.
“This way, please.” The Suits push me into the back of a shiny black car, the windows too dark to see inside. I've never been in a real car before. Other than a few specialized services like the Departure Crews, we only have the automated shuttlebuses in the Quads. Cars are dangerous – only trained, qualified professionals use them. One of them opens the door to the back seat. “That’s your place, right there.”
They shut the door behind me, and I look around. More tinted glass separates me from the front seats, and the inside of the car doors are plain – no handles. I’m trapped back here until one of the Suits lets me out.
Protocol.
How many others have there been? Why haven’t I heard of it? Even if it happened only once, surely this disruption of the system would have spread all over the Quads. Ronni and Charlie, even Viv, were sure shocked. But it must happen. So what happened to the others?
Pins and needles attack my lungs, and suddenly it's hard to breathe. A terrible but familiar feeling. It’s happened since I was little – since the first time I realized what the number on my wrist meant. Every time it happens, I go back to that sinking panic, as if decades of my life were dropping away into nothing.
“Easy now, breathe,” Father would say. Then he would start counting. “In, two, three, four, five,” and he’d breathe in with me, slow and steady, “Out, two, three, four, five,” and we’d deflate our lungs until they were completely empty.
I try it now. In, two, three, four, five. Out, two, three, four, five. In… out… in… out…
The car does not turn back towards the residential area, but out towards its border, into an empty stretch of the Quad I never knew was here. We pass a few clusters of unmarked buildings and continue all the way to the Quad’s end, where the white walled bubble comes all the way down to the ground. I’ve never seen the edge of the Quad before. We all know the Quads are enclosed for our protection from the unstable elements of nature and remains of war beyond, but most of the time the brightness of the white dome feels like a broad, open sky. Staring at its edge, I suddenly feel stifled.
Still the car doesn’t slow.
Where are we going? There’s nowhere left to go. I press my forehead against the window, straining to look ahead, and see a piece of the wall pull up, opening into a tunnel.
We barrel towards the opening as if leaving the Quad were no big deal, as if these men zoom in and out of the Quad all the time. But that’s crazy. No one leaves the Quads. There isn’t anything beyond the Quads, only ruins from a destroyed world. I even heard once it rains actual acid from the sky. That’s why we have Quads. But we zoom right out of the Quad through the opening anyway, and I catch myself holding my breath.
The tunnel is dark and tightly enclosed. As the wall seals tight behind us, I twist around and watch my world disappear.
Chapter Eight
Gracelyn
With nothing to do, we spend the day in the living room’s overplush chairs, enveloped in the earthy greens of the walls and curtains. I pull one of the flat hand-held syncscreens from the dock on the wall, sync to my digipad and pull up the texts from my class – after missing today's LQM orientation, I will be behind tomorrow as it is.
I do not r
eally need to brush up on the content for training. I only need to look at something once, and I can pull it up in my memory whenever I need it. But I do desperately need something to do.
Except that I cannot focus. The house is too quiet. The couch is too empty. Mother and Father are acting too strange. Or rather, they are acting too much like everything is normal.
There is nothing normal about this. Nothing is okay.
Evie's gone. It is like a crack spreading deeper into my heart each time I think it. The silence is like a wall, building up around me. I do not know that I have ever seen a crack in anything. If something cracks, it is fixed or replaced, almost before it has even happened. Why is no one fixing this? How has this been allowed to happen?
I slam my screen down on my lap and stomp as I stand up.
“Gracelyn,” Mother chides, startled by the noise.
But the noise is the only thing that feels better.
“No. This is bullshit.” That is not my word; that is an Evie word. But she is not here, and someone has to call this what it is. “What is wrong with you two, going around like it's any other day? Like it doesn't matter?”
My chest seizes and I know I am about to cry, so I turn away and run, down the hall and up the stairs, slamming the door to my room behind me. I throw myself onto my bed face down and lie there, tears absorbing into my comforter, ashamed and surprised by my uncontrolled emotion.
Heavy footsteps follow me upstairs, and pause outside my door. There’s a knock.
“Let me in, Gracelyn. Let's talk.” It’s Father.
“Fine.”
Already regret and guilt are rushing through me. I don’t make scenes. I don’t argue. I am the good daughter, the one that follows orders and doesn’t talk back. The one with the perfect recall and the bright future.
I roll onto my side and pull my legs in as he enters.
Father has always seemed larger than life, the way the glare of light blinks across his glasses and his mouth sets in a thin line under his mustache. It wasn’t just because I was little. Everyone defers to him. I don’t know what he does as a Green Level at LQM, but it is important, and it is secret. Maybe I will get to know more once I work there. But he is always gentle, his words always quiet. The gentleness of a man so confident in his power that he does not need to use it.
But right now he seems smaller than usual, his shoulders folded forward. He leans against the wall and tucks his hands behind him. I expect him to scold me, the way he does when Evie acts out. But when he speaks, his voice is calm as ever.
“Do you understand why we get this day to ourselves?” he says.
“It’s a Departure Day.”
“Yes, but, do you understand why Departure Days are days we stay home?”
Yes and no. I stare at the wall.
“Because we hurt.”
Is he really admitting to pain? My eyes flit to him despite myself, too curious what he will say next.
“No matter what the Directorate does for us, it hurts when someone we love is suddenly gone. This is why we tried to keep you and Evie apart. We didn’t want this hurt for you. But that is why we get this day. To acknowledge the pain.”
They did try to spare me this. If Evie and I had followed the rules, I would be fine right now. But Evie needed someone. No one else was willing to attach themselves to her. And I needed her. I needed someone to remind me to stop taking everything so seriously every once in a while. Someone to show me it would okay if I let go on occasion, no matter what my instructors or our parents expect of me.
Who will do that for me now?
“But you can't give into it,” Father continues. “You can't let it grow in you. That is a path to a life of pain. Today we let ourselves feel it, and then tomorrow we move on. You know this, Gracelyn. And I know you can do it.”
I nod.
I mean to say more, but my words get choked on a swell of feeling, on the pain of it, and I know I have nothing to say today – at least, nothing fitting for the good daughter I should be, the good student, the good citizen.
I know without having felt it before: this is exactly what the Directorate works to keep from creeping into this society.
I feel ashamed, and the sting only makes everything worse. The only rule I’ve ever broken in my life, and now I’m paying the price. A tear escapes and drops to my comforter.
Father sighs. “Tuck this away, Gracelyn. Allowing pain inside yourself will only beget more pain.”
Then he leaves.
Chapter Nine
Evie
We keep driving for a long time – every minute taking us farther and farther from the Quad, from home, from my life. We drive longer than I would have thought it possible for anything to go out beyond the Quads.
The tunnel is bolt-straight and lined in smooth metal arcs like a shell, hugging tightly around the vehicle, the only lighting coming from the car itself. Over the dull whirr of the engine, my heart is a rapid thudding in my ears. I do the only thing I can, clutching my hands tight into the sides of the seat cushion until my knuckles ache.
Finally the car slows down, and I press against the window to peer ahead past the end of the tunnel, catching the side view of a large block of a building. There’s not a single window, just walls of concrete. My throat clenches. Whatever happens out here in this walled-up, hidden building, there’s no way it’s good.
Suits One and Two pull me out of the car and towards it, their hands tight around my arms in a way I’m sure will bruise. A defensive instinct kicks up in me and I almost snark at them for it, but then I remember I'm trying to be cooperative. To show I'm not trying to cause problems by being alive. To get back home.
The door is coated in beige paint that almost blends into the concrete wall, except for the chips and flakes at its edges. Suit Two holds his digipad to the scanner, and the door buzzes to let us in. Old-style screw-in electric bulbs swing on naked wires from the ceiling, spread far apart. The hallway is barely lit and our shadows stretch along the walls. I stumble as my eyes adjust, pushed by the forceful hands of Suits One and Two. Even in here, the Suits don’t take off their sunglasses.
We pass an occasional door, rusted and shut tight. But the worst thing about this place is the quiet. The only sound is the echoing shuffles of our steps. The Suits guide me through a few turns in the halls before finally stopping in front of one of the doors. They thrust me inside. And then the door slams shut behind me.
A single light bulb leers down at me from the ceiling. Along the back wall is a banged-up med scanner, with a tray of tools on top of it. A flash of hope lights up in me – maybe they just need to check me out, and then they’ll send me home. But then I realize: why would they bring me all the way out of the Quad to this creepy place, just for a checkup?
Damnit. Damnit, damnit, damnit. A threat of panic tightens down my spine, and I shiver to shake it off. I’ve got to get out of here. I look around the room again, scouring it for anything I might be able to use, but come up empty. I’m officially over this trying-to-cooperate thing.
I kick the door and scream at the top of my lungs, releasing the fear that’s building in me with each syllable: “Let me out of here! Let me out! Let me out!”
I almost slam my fist into the door too, for good measure, but the idea of the pain calls me back to reason. Instead, I lean my forehead against the cool metal of the door and listen to my voice echo down the hall.
Nothing.
There’s probably not even anyone out there.
I try the door handle, because what the hell. It’s locked. Of course it is.
Desperation flattens me. I slump against the door and slide down until I’m on the ground, my elbows on my knees and my head buried between them, and let out a long, hollow whimper.
I don’t know how long I sit there. With my digipad not working, time is impossible to tell in this dark, dingy place. After a long, long while, a tray slides through a flap in the door, serving up an eco-plastic bowl of dry cereal, a sta
le roll, and a bottle of warm water. No protein. No vegetables. None of the neat squares of balanced nutrients the food printers serve up. There's a set of flatware on the tray too, but I don't bother with it, picking up pieces of cereal with my fingers instead.
Wait – I look again.
There’s a knife on the tray, in a wrapped packet along with other flatware. Finally, something I can work with. It’s plastic, but it could do some damage, maybe. If I poked it into an eye or something.
Ick.
I tear the package open and clench it in my fist close to my side. I have no idea if it’ll work, but the idea of fighting back eases some of the painful tension in my shoulders.
I sit on the floor and wait, anticipation and rage surging through me.
And wait.
And wait.
Surely hours have passed. My stomach starts to grumble again. This is the most boring escape plan ever.
I pass the time scratching doodles into the plaster of the wall with the knife, chipping away the paint, the same way I scribble in the margins of my papers at school. But it’s not long before my fingers hint at pain from the pressure, so I stop.
But I'm still bored.
I sprawl out on the floor and see how far I can roll my empty bowl across before it flops over onto its side. After a while I get pretty good at it. I roll a real nice one, evenly balanced and spinning fast, when the door flies open.
A woman strides in and shuts the door behind her, her mouth pulled tight. The door clangs into the rolling bowl, sending it flying against the leg of the med scanner before collapsing to the ground with a clap. The woman jumps, then looks back to me. She gives me such a startled glare that I jump too, and frown in return. Too late, I think to grab the knife, but the door is already shut again, and clicks as the lock fastens. My chest contracts – that was my chance.
The woman glances at the knife and raises an eyebrow.
Departures Page 4
