“It protects and braces the area inside, keeping it environmentally sound. But more than that, it acts as a deterrent for any and all outside who might harbor ill intentions. Whole sections can be closed off at a moment’s notice, long before anyone could get inside.”
“So it’s kind of like a beehive?”
“Do your people keep beehives to help pollinate your crops?” asked MacGillus from behind me, and I paused in my march up the stairs to look at him.
“Actually, I’m not sure. I’m not a farmer.”
“Neither is he,” said Jathem from ahead. “But MacGillus just married one, and now he thinks he’s an expert. Although why he’d ever want to farm is beyond me.”
“You know that farming was my first choice. I just have a black thumb is all.”
“Your first choice?” I asked, not wanting to stall their flow of conversation, but also too curious to resist.
“Everyone in the tower has a task, a purpose, Miss…” Jathem paused and cocked his head, slowing on the stairs. “I never caught your name,” he remarked.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Violet. Violet Bates.”
He inclined his head and then began to march again. I sucked in a breath, already cognizant that my ribs and thighs were aching, and followed suit. I hated that I was still injured—now, more than ever before, was a time when I most needed to be fit, and it just wasn’t possible.
“As I was saying, everyone has a purpose, and is allowed to apprentice in whatever department he or she feels best suited to. Sometimes they are accepted, but other times they must find a different department, as their skills are not up to par.”
“Ah. That’s interesting,” I replied. “I guess we do things similarly, but… enterprise makes it possible for anyone to do or be anything they want.” Depending on their gender and which side of the river they live on, I would have added if I’d wanted to be completely accurate.
“Provided they have the mental capacity for it, I assume,” he mused.
I frowned at the dryness in Jathem’s voice, and then shrugged. It was accurate.
We finally reached the corner of the building, and turned. My breathing was coming in sharp bursts now, the ache in my ribs spreading. While my bruised ribs had seemingly settled down, the stairs were providing a unique set of challenges that they did not agree with.
Neither did my thighs or my calves, for that matter. The steps just seemed never-ending, and there was no way of knowing how much higher we would have to climb before we reached our destination. I felt a deep yawn coming on, the exhaustion of the past few days really starting to take its toll. The multitude of steps ahead of me were calling for me to sit down and find a way to catch at least a few minutes of precious sleep, as well as catch my breath.
MacGillus seemed to note my flagging strength first; after a few moments of my panting and wheezing, he said, “Miss, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I insisted as I took a few more steps up, ignoring my aches and pains to prove my point.
Jathem turned and looked at me, his eyes taking in the cast and some of the still-visible bruising on my scalp and face. “You were injured recently?”
I gave a bitter chuckle and nodded. “You could say that.” You could also say that I went on an almost suicide mission to save my family and kill an insane princess with a grudge. I killed her, but I almost died in the process, so…
“Change of plan,” the man announced suddenly. “We’re going to have you looked over by a member of our medical staff. We need to wait here while they clear the appropriate halls. We aren’t prepared to alert the rest of the tower to your existence. Take a moment to catch your breath.”
Blinking, I came to a staggering stop. “That’s a very kind offer,” I replied. “But it’s unnecessary.” He shrugged, and I felt a thrill of excitement, even through my feigned indifference. Could they be able to help me mend a little sooner?
“It’s clear that your medical practices are rudimentary at best, and we are not a people who like inefficiency. You’ll be met by two councilors after you have been examined by one of the Medica.”
“The Medica?” I asked, trying to quell my excitement. “Is that what you call your doctors?”
“That is how we refer to the department of doctors,” Jathem corrected, tugging his shirt down and smoothing it out. I noticed MacGillus was similarly making a point of straightening out his uniform, and frowned.
“And one of the councilors coming to meet us is your leader, isn’t it?” I surmised out loud, and it really wasn’t much of a question, but by the look in Jathem’s eyes, he was at least a little impressed by my deduction.
“Indeed. Knight Commander Devon Alexander.” There was a reverence in how he spoke Devon’s name; I would have found it almost amusing if it weren’t also a bit nerve-wracking. That level of devotion to a person made warning bells go off in my head as I recalled the Liberators’ blind devotion to Desmond.
“I see. Who’s the other one?”
“Raevyn Hart. She’s Head Farmer.”
A woman working with men? Maybe Matrus and Patrus’ problems were not endemic to all human beings. That was… a nice thought. It meant we could grow and better ourselves, overcome the genderism that had separated us for all of recent history.
“She could coax an apple tree from used soil,” MacGillus said. “Under her, her department’s efficiency has gone up a whole percentage point!”
“MacGillus, shut your hole,” Jathem barked, and MacGillus immediately turned contrite.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t tell her how much we produced, just the stats.”
Jathem sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s fine. We’re all… a bit unsettled by all this. Let’s just keep quiet until we get you checked out by the medics.”
I exhaled and shoved my hand into my pocket. My questions would have to wait for a bit, it would seem.
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8
VIOLET
Several minutes of waiting on the same steps later—an eternity during which thousands of questions churned inside of me—Jathem, at some unseen signal, gave a nod and speared me with a look. “The way has been cleared. We need to climb up three more levels though. You ready?”
I nodded and ran a hand nervously over my scalp. The hair was growing back in quickly, but it still felt weird under my hand. I wiped my palm on my t-shirt and began to climb once more, following Jathem. We soon reached the correct level. According to the numbers, now we were at 124-N-43. He turned the wheel on the door to the inner wall and swung it outward, toward us.
He stepped through, leading me into a narrow hall with a long sheet of glass paneling one side of the wall. As he moved on down the corridor, my steps slowed to a halt, and I openly gaped at the enormity of the sight on the other side of the pane.
Just past it, I could see three giant structures hanging from the ceiling. Thousands of feet below, around the base of the tower, were lines of green vegetation, bisected by straight white lines that were probably footpaths. The three buildings were arranged in a rough triangle—the two closest were cylindrical in shape, and glowing, while the one farther away, at this angle framed perfectly by the white ones, was cone-shaped and so dark that the light reflected off of it, giving the illusion that it was glittering.
Bridges ran from structure to structure, and periodically, every hundred feet or so, a flat pavilion stretched in between them, seemingly suspended between all three, much like a hammock suspended in the air. The ones I could see looked very much like public parks. I could see people wearing uniforms similar in cut for the most part, but in different colors—mainly white, black, crimson, green, gray, and blue—but it was hard to discern much beyond that; that’s how far away we still were.
“You built this?” I whispered in awe, my eyes tracking up to where filtered sunlight seemed to radiate out into the tower from all levels, illuminating it as if it were a warm summer’s day and the inside was shaded by branches from
dozens of trees.
“Our predecessors did,” Jathem replied, his voice carrying from ahead. “Come along, Miss Bates.”
“You better go, miss,” MacGillus said as I lingered, and I reluctantly tore myself from the view. It was mesmerizing how… strange and beautiful it was. How could they have achieved all this? It was mindboggling.
I walked slowly after Jathem, following him down the hall while my eyes continued to slide all over the incredible sight out the window, drinking it in. The sheer manpower alone… If this tower were to be filled to its maximum capacity, I’d bet there could be more than three times the number of humans here than there were in Matrus and Patrus combined. At least. That was a staggering thought.
The windowpane ended as we neared a junction, and I looked back to note how many turn-offs we’d passed to get there. The uniformity of the shell made it all too easy to get confused. I didn’t want that happening to me if I had to make a run for it.
“This way,” Jathem said, pointing to the left. I turned the corner and saw a door with a white, glowing section of wall just above it. I couldn’t grasp how they’d made the wall do that—but the sign at least was recognizable, a glowing red cross set in the center of the white panel. I pointed at it and looked back at Jathem, and he nodded.
This door, unlike the one before, was simple and had a flat-hooked handle. I followed MacGillus and Jathem through it, then blinked at the sudden expanse of whiteness that I saw. This entire area seemed to be white walls on white ceilings on white floors, all blending together. I focused dizzily as the two men in front of me led on. We seemed to be following some kind of glowing line in the floor, and I put my mind to memorizing that, too, as we went through several atrium-looking rooms and to another door marked with a glowing panel. With no people anywhere inside, the strange atmosphere of the area was only increased, and I felt more tense than I’d been since I’d gotten them not to fight me.
When we went through the door, a bald woman with dark tattoos on her scalp looked up from a petri dish she held in one hand, a dropper in the other hand hovering over it. She frowned when she saw us, and then sat down the petri dish and the dropper on the clear table in front of her.
Her eyes were dark brown, as were the strong eyebrows over them, and her mouth was like a tight rosebud.
“Knight Elite Jathem,” she greeted formally, shooting me and my cast a curious look. “I assume this is what the level was cleared out for?”
“It is indeed, Medic Selka.” He pronounced her name oddly, elongating the “s” and putting an emphasis on the “ka,” and I wondered how the group knew English but spoke it differently than we did. Now that I noticed it, they all said some words differently, though not enough that I couldn’t understand it.
The medic blinked coldly and looked me over, her curiosity replaced with professional aloofness.
“Come here,” she ordered, moving to a wall. She pulled a panel out of its side, revealing a plush-looking bed, and patted it. “Please sit down.”
I approached it and sat. It took a small jump to do so, given its height above the ground. Medic Selka pressed a few panels on the wall next to me, and the next thing I knew a flat beam of light had turned on and was moving over my head. I felt a tingle where it hit me, but nothing else. The medic reached out and grabbed my cast, looking at it with disdain and alarm, her brows furrowed tightly together.
“What is this thing?” she sniffed, her nose crinkling.
“I broke my arm not long ago,” I replied, suddenly feeling self-conscious about the cast.
She looked over at Jathem and MacGillus, disbelief stamped over her face. “What is going on?” she demanded. “Who would’ve done something this… this cruel to another human being?”
I blinked and pulled my cast out of her grasp. The machine overhead whirred loudly, and I looked up to see the light retract back into the wall as the section below it lit up, the words “Image Generating” scrolling across it.
“Relax, M. Selka,” Jathem soothed, his hands going up. “She’s an undoc. Her family kept her well-hidden for years.”
“Wow,” she said with a surprised blink. “There hasn’t been an undoc in, what… two years?”
“Not that we’ve heard of,” MacGillus replied. “But you can see why the council wants it kept quiet. Bad for order.”
“Especially given how old she is,” replied Selka in a conspiratorial whisper.
Jathem frowned and crossed his arms. “This is classified protocol ten, M. Selka. Don’t let your curiosity get you in trouble.”
The woman frowned, a flash of irritation passing over her features, and then turned back to the screen. “Her arm was broken,” she said, and I looked back up to find an incredibly realistic view of what was presumably my arm on the screen. The definition and detail in the picture was amazing, and it was completely colored in, but the outer layers of the flesh were translucent frames atop the picture of my bone. It was all there—skin, muscles, tendons, and veins. I’d known basically how bodies worked, and learned more from working with the experienced medical personnel in our group, but I’d never expected to see a picture of the inside of my own body. It was fascinating.
From the image, even I could see the break. It was partially healed, delicate little strands of bones slowly reaching out toward each other, some of them already connected with more on the way. It looked like it felt—painstakingly slow. It was mind-blowing that they could see into my body so vividly.
“These injuries are weeks old. Did she get caught in a gear?” M. Selka asked, her eyes moving as the images moved, following her fingers as she dragged them across the wall. She pinched them together over my shoulder and chest, the image shooting in, and then drew them apart, the image drifting down to my ribs. “Her ribs are still bruised from whatever happened, and she experienced some first- and second-degree burns. Her head…”
She trailed off then, her mouth working as she stared at the hole in my skull. I touched the scab that was still thick from the procedure, and looked up at her. M. Selka looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be sick or not; her face was pale and disturbed.
She quickly collapsed the image and whipped around. “Who are you trying to kid, KE Jathem? There is no way anyone could have performed surgery like that. She would’ve died! The sheer obscenity of the harm it could do is beyond words! Who is she, and where did she come from?”
Jathem sighed heavily and touched his earlobe with a finger. “M. Selka, you are relieved of duty. Report to your superior and speak of nothing you have seen here until you are debriefed.”
“Now you can’t expect me to—” M. Selka fell silent, her head tilting to the side as if she were listening to something. After a moment, she pulled her top down with a yank at the bottom, smoothing it out, and then tapped her wrists into an x in front of her face. “Wahela, and my apologies, Knight Elite.”
“Tahatlana, Medic. May your waters run clear and cold.”
She nodded and moved quickly for the door, leaving in a hurry. The entire exchange left me baffled, and I looked up at Jathem. He turned from the door and saw me staring at him.
“You have questions,” he said, his voice resigned.
“A billion,” I replied, shifting excitedly.
He sighed. “I’ll give you an answer to three, but if there is one I feel I shouldn’t answer, I will skip it. Deal?”
A stupid one, but it would have to do. I gave him a nod, and started with the first one I could think of. “What’s an undoc?”
“Undoc is short for undocumented. Population is strictly controlled and enforced in the tower—we are a completely balanced system. Too many people and the entire thing comes tumbling down. However, that doesn’t stop some people from accidently conceiving, and then deciding to keep their child a secret.”
“Interesting,” I replied, because it was. The implications of it all, strict population control and secret children… This place had to be carefully monitored and observed to maintain
order. It made me want to ask a dozen follow-up questions, like what happened to an undoc after it was discovered. I hated to think they might kill them just to keep the population under a certain number.
“We don’t execute undocs,” Knight Elite Jathem said tersely, and I realized I had spoken the last bit out loud. I shook my head to clear out some of the spider webs as he continued to speak, mumbling an apology. “We educate them and try to put them back into the system.”
“The biggest problem is getting them placed,” continued MacGillus. “Lots of departments won’t take them, as they… represent a certain amount of controversy and shame.”
I blinked at that. I knew they were trying to explain things to me, but it was clear they were things they took for granted, and even though I had gotten some good information out of that, a lot of it seemed implied, which meant it flew right over my head.
Sighing, I leaned back. “Second question. With Medic Selka now dismissed, does that mean I won’t get to see how you guys could fix my arm faster?”
Jathem stared at me, and then smiled for a brief second. “We would never dream of that. It was just decided that you would be attended to by the Chief Surgeon. He’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“If we’re lucky and he’s feeling spry today,” MacGillus mumbled, and Jathem reached out and smacked him loudly in the shoulder, making the other man yelp.
“Be respectful,” Jathem said, just as the door swung open, and a man and a woman entered.
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9
VIOLET
The woman entered first. Something about her posture and physicality immediately made my hair stand on edge, it reminded me so much of Tabitha. However, as she drew closer to me, pushing deeper into the room, I could see subtle differences that clearly distinguished her from the now-deceased Matrian princess and psychopath.
For one thing, her hair was jet black, with clearly premature whitening occurring at the roots. It was collected and woven into an elaborate braid encircling the crown of her head, making it look like a dark, shining tiara. There were smile lines around her mouth, and a worry line seemed to be permanently indented between her thick, generous eyebrows. As she moved deeper into the room, I caught the smell of rich soil and vegetation, and noticed that the knees of her forest-green uniform were stained with dirt, as were her fingertips, and there was a smudge on her cheekbone as well.
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