The Culling ttk-1

by Steven dos Santos

  Penicillin.

  I recognize that name. It’s one of the medicines we learned about during our med training. Some kind of miracle drug. It occurs to me that it might slow down the infection ravaging me long enough to provide Cole with the one miracle he so desperately needs.

  I reach out a shaking hand, but the medicine shrinks away from me.

  It feels like I’m falling backward and I tense. It’s not the fever or my imagination-the wall’s shifting, as is the entire corridor, reconfiguring into an entirely new pattern.

  Damn it!

  I should have grabbed the medicine while I had the chance. Now it’s gone, and once again I face darkness. That’s why I haven’t seen any of the others. They must be keeping us separated on purpose, shifting this labyrinth every time we get too close, just in case we decide to work together. But besides Digory and me, who else would really go out of their way for each other at this point? Ophelia and Gideon? I can’t see it, especially given her anger at him for letting me beat him in that last trial. The Establishment must have another reason for wanting to keep us isolated from each other. And as unsettling as that thought is, I don’t have time to ponder it. The next time I come across supplies, I can’t hesitate for an instant.

  If there is a next time.

  I check the chronometer again.

  00:11:33

  Bracing myself against the walls, I push farther along this new corridor, twisting and turning through passage after passage. Even if Digory succeeds in finding enough supplies for both of us, the one thing I need to find right now is a source of illumination, or else I’m never going to get out of here.

  Along the way, I stumble across a few stray packs of ration bars. I shove them into my pockets, along with a canteen filled with cold water and a switchblade. I flick the switchblade open, and without thinking I run my fingers over the serrated edge, drawing blood. I wince.

  Snapping the blade shut, I tuck it in my belt.

  Faster and faster I move, my fingers leaving a trail of blood and cold sweat along the passageways. The farther I go, the more I have to rely on supporting myself against the walls to remain upright. If I’d only taken that medicine.

  I stagger around another corner and come to a dead end.

  There’s a chest propped against the wall. I lurch toward it and fumble with the metal latch, but it’s locked. Then the floor vibrates, and once again the walls shift, but not before I grab the chest and drag it to me.

  The dead end’s gone, replaced by yawning blackness.

  That sound. Something’s shuffling out of the darkness, headed my way.

  I check the watch.

  00:09:47

  I tug at the latch a couple of times, but it won’t budge, and it slips through my already slick fingers.

  The pocket knife.

  I rip it free, but it my haste it clatters to the floor. I fall to all fours, my hands sweeping over the cold tiles …

  The sound comes again.

  I whip my head around, my eyes trying in vain to penetrate the murk.

  Something’s sliding along the tiles. It’s like something heavy being dragged across the floor … drag and stop … drag and stop …

  It’s the fever. I’m delirious … there’s nothing there … nothing …

  A new sound weaves in and out … wheezing … as if something’s struggling, out of the depths, for air …

  My heart’s a battering ram trying to breach the walls of my chest. One of my fingertips brushes against icy steel. I grab the knife and plunge it toward the trunk. It misses the lock, instead digging into the lid. I wrench it free.

  The sounds oozing out of the gloom are louder now, and I can’t keep denying they’re real.

  “Lucky … ” The sound of my name carried on a labored rasp causes every hair on my body to petrify. Whatever’s in here is coming for me.

  I have to get the lock open before whatever it is reaches me …

  I plunge the switchblade into the lock.

  Snap!

  The lock breaks away and hits the floor with a loud clank.

  Tucking the knife back into my belt, I dig my fingernails into the thick groove between the lid and trunk, prying it apart and yanking the cover open. I can just make out about half a dozen shiny flashlights.

  Stuffing one into my pocket, I whirl, brandishing the other one ahead of me like a weapon. My sweaty finger finds the power button and I press down.

  Nothing happens.

  “Lucky … why …?”

  The voice sounds like it’s just a few feet away …

  I bang the flashlight against my leg to rattle the batteries, realizing an instant too late that it’s my wounded side. Pain sears through me. I nearly double over. A blast like the sun itself blinds me with hot light, momentarily making me forget about the pain.

  “Why, Lucky? Why …?”

  The wail’s so close, ringing through my ears as if its source’s lips are about to touch my earlobes …

  My body bolts fully erect. I shine the light ahead of me …

  And gasp.

  It’s Mrs. Bledsoe.

  twenty-eight

  It can’t be-I saw her ashes.

  Unless … unless Cassius lied to me. That has to be it, because she’s standing right here looking at me, her eyes muddy puddles of sadness and accusation. Maybe it’s just my distorted senses, wracked by fever, but her skin, though pale as snow, radiates a light of its own, shimmering against the darkness beyond her.

  My veins pump joy into my sagging heart, causing it to swell. “You’re alive.” I move toward her, arms opened wide.

  She opens her mouth and coughs. A torrent of blood gushes from it, soaking the dirty smock she’s wearing, spilling down her arms, her legs, dripping off her fingers.

  I freeze. No one who’s lost that much blood can still be standing.

  It must be a trick. Some kind of illusion engineered by Cassius to torment me.

  But it looks so real.

  Maybe she is dead. And I’ve finally lost my mind.

  The scarlet stream pouring out her cracked lips thins and dissipates. “How could you do this to me, Lucky,” she croaks. “How could you let them kill me after everything I’ve done for you?” Her voice sounds disjointed, as if she’s pulling the words from her mind at random and assembling them like a puzzle.

  I back away. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Bledsoe. I never meant for you to get hurt. I love you.” A tide of pain crashes through me, the worst kind, because no bandage, no antibiotic, no medicine ever invented can ever heal it.

  Another chill sweeps my body. I feel like I’m burning up. I squeeze my eyes against the throbbing in my head.

  When I open them again, Mrs. Bledsoe seems to flicker like a breeze blowing through a candle, and then she’s steady again. Her eyes bore right through me as if I don’t exist. “You’re a murderer, Lucky.” Her mouth twists into a sneer that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen on her face since I’ve known her. “And you need to be punished.”

  “Mrs. Bledsoe, please … ” I almost trip over the chest of flashlights as I continue to retreat from her. My chest heaves with shallow, rapid-fire breaths.

  Mrs. Bledsoe shambles toward me.

  Drag. Squish. Drag. Squish …

  She opens her arms wide and smiles, her teeth caked with goops of bloody phlegm. I cringe, expecting to feel the heat of her rotting breath sear my nostrils. But all I can sniff is a cold, cloying antiseptic stench that’s suffocating me.

  “Don’t be afraid, Lucky,” she caws through a mouthful of bile. “Your pain won’t last as long as mine.”

  She reaches for me-

  I stumble backward. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt. It’s not my fault. Please … ”

  Drag. Squish. Drag. Squish …

  “Leave. Me. Alone.” I whirl to get away from her.

  There’s someone standing at the far end of the corridor, facing me.

  I cast a beam of light in that direction, and even tho
ugh I can’t make out a face, I can make out a form. A familiar form. The form of a little boy.

  “Cole?” The name quavers in the air. My heart swells. Can it really be?

  The figure doesn’t respond. Then it darts around the corner.

  The aching of my entire being propels my wobbling legs after him. “Cole! Is that you? Don’t be afraid! It’s me !”

  “You can’t outrun your past,” Mrs. Bledsoe’s voice yelps after me.

  I’m sprinting now, the beam from my flashlight zigzagging ahead of me, my pounding heartbeat trying to drown out my panting breaths. I hug the walls for support against the dizziness that throws me off balance as I chase Cole down winding corridors, darting left, banking right, ignoring any number of supplies along the way, ignoring the shuffling and dragging of Mrs. Bledsoe nipping at my heels. The only thing that matters is Cole. I’ve got to find him. Make him understand that I didn’t leave him … that it’s not my fault … that without him, there’s nothing left to live for …

  “Cole! Wait! Why are you afraid of me?” I rasp the words in between the painful breaths that I squeeze from my lungs. My eyes blur with wet stings, making the pathway ahead a dizzying array of streaking light and swooshing movement spiraling out of control.

  Careening around another corner, I almost crash into the figure. He’s standing just a few feet away, on a ledge, with nothing but gray sky ahead of him. I brace against the wall to break my momentum so we both don’t go over the edge-gasping for air, burning with fever, exhausted. But despite this, I feel better than I have in months. Cool relief douses the fire of my sickness.

  It’s finally over. I found him at last.

  His back is still toward me, but I recognize his shock of fine hair, glistening almost like a halo, the same as Mrs. Bledsoe’s skin. It must be the fever distorting my vision. Cole is dressed in the same baggy clothes he was wearing the day I got recruited, right down to the scuffed brown shoe with the tattered laces. They never even got him a change of clothes, after all this time? He’s clutching something in his hand. Weathered parchment pages. It’s the story of the Lady. I recognize the missing corner on the page. But Cassius torched those pages right in front of our eyes …

  Am I so far gone that my memories are now haunting me, intermingling with my reality?

  I push the inconsistencies from my head, aching to wrap my little brother in my arms once again, tell him he’s safe at last.

  I swallow a sob. “Cole. It’s okay, buddy. I’m here.” All it takes is just a few steps to finally bridge the once enormous gap that separated us. I reach for his shoulder-

  Without uttering a word or even looking at me, he steps off the ledge and plummets away …

  “No!” I leap forward even as my heart leaps into my throat, jamming there. My belly smacks the hard floor, knocking the wind from me. I slide the rest of the way, until my torso’s hanging over the edge. “Cole!” My eyes search the bleak landscape far below. It’s lined with jagged spikes, jutting upward like a gigantic pincushion. My heartbreak turns to confusion.

  Where is he? His body should be lying there, impaled like one of those beautiful butterflies in one of the science labs at the Instructional Facility.

  But there’s no trace of him. He’s gone, as if he never existed.

  Did he ever really?

  I can’t hold back the sobs any longer. “Please don’t go … ”

  Drag. Squish. Drag. Squish.

  “You can’t save him,” Mrs. Bledsoe’s voice rasps behind me.

  I’m too numb to be startled.

  “And you can’t save yourself,” she adds. “Just let go, son. Join him. It’ll be over a lot quicker than it was for me.” Her voice crackles like live wires in my ears. “You’re running out of time. Make your choice.”

  Choice. That’s what this whole Recruitment’s been about.

  I edge a little closer to the brink.

  Maybe she’s right.

  And though I’m not even sure I really saw Cole, there was a time I wouldn’t have hesitated to follow him into the void. But this is bigger than just us now. I finally understand what Digory had tried to tell me when we met. I’m not really saving Cole if I’m condemning him to live in a world that allows these things to happen-encourages them to happen.

  I actually don’t really have a choice at all.

  The empty vessel of my body is suddenly overflowing with a sense of purpose, even more so than when my face flashed on the jumbotrons on Recruitment Day. I have to keep going not only so I can save my own little brother, but so that no one else will ever have to save anyone they love-their sisters, mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, friends-anyone-

  Digory’s face flashes in my mind’s eye.

  I pull away from the ledge and climb to my feet.

  Cassius and his techs have been preying on my fear and guilt. None of this is real. Not Cole. Not Mrs. Bledsoe.

  Taking a deep breath, I turn to face my accuser.

  Mrs. Bledsoe continues to stare at me with blank eyes, an occasional trickle of blood oozing from her lips. It’s as though she’s hovering rather than standing.

  “I’m going to make you pay for what happened to me,” she whispers. She staggers forward, groping for me. But I’m no longer afraid and walk right up to her. I take a deep breath as her gnarled hands ripple like water, passing right through me.

  Once I’m past her, I whip my flashlight to the corner of the ceiling. There, on a narrow track, I glimpse a tell-tale pinprick of yellow light beaming down.

  The shimmering halos. The static. The truncated speech. It wasn’t the byproduct of infection spreading within me, it was holograms. Just like a part of me suspected from the beginning.

  I almost laugh aloud. I guess I passed their test by deciding not to off myself.

  Mrs. Bledsoe-the projection masquerading as her-turns and smiles again. “It doesn’t matter. You’re too late … son. You’ll never find your way back now.”

  Mrs. Bledsoe flickers and disappears, just like Cole did.

  My eyes dart to my chronometer.

  00:01:48

  Less than two minutes to go.

  The holograms were all a trick to derail me from the exit, and I was stupid enough to fall for it.

  But they were triggered when I found that one corridor-which probably means it leads to the exit. How can I trace my way back again, with such little time left?

  My flashlight illuminates the bloody handprints I left on the walls.

  I dash back the way I came, whipping my light back and forth until I find the next crimson marker, and the next, speeding my way back down twisting hallways and sharp corners, allowing my own blood to guide me toward salvation.

  I risk a glance at my watch.

  00:00:59

  A couple of times I have to double back when I miss a print or it’s too faded to see clearly. My heart’s beating so fast it feels like it’s going to rupture. And the intermittently shifting walls aren’t helping matters.

  I lurch around the next bend. This is it! I recognize this corridor. It’s the same one where the image of Mrs. Bledsoe first appeared. It has to be the way out.

  The walls start to shift again …

  Springing across the remaining few feet, I smash against the floor and slide the rest of the way, through a gap in the wall, just as a buzzer goes off and the wall slides shut behind me.

  I grab my wrist.

  00:00:00

  Looks like I made it.

  I collapse against one of the dark glass walls of a small, octagonal-shaped enclosure. I’m gasping for breath. It almost feels like there isn’t any air in the room. My legs splay out in front of me on the hard surface. The glass around me remains opaque. I tense for the inevitable announcement from Slade, but none comes. My pulse twitches in my wrists.

  I shove my face into my palms. How am I going to keep going now? Even if somehow I made it through this Trial, I won’t make it past the next.

  My body curls into itself like
coiled twine.

  Then I just lie there, eyes closed … and wait, wondering if I’ll live to see Cole and Digory again.

  Attention Recruits!

  Slade’s voice blasts through the loudspeakers and jolts my eyes open.

  How long was I out?

  We are pleased to announce that all five of you have made it through the labyrinth. The time has come to reveal your rankings.

  twenty-nine

  The screens that have been obscuring the glass of my prison rise with a whir. I squint against a blast of light and raise my hand against it. Despite the cramps in my stomach, I steady myself against the wall and slide upward until I’m standing. When my eyes adjust I see Digory and the others surrounding me, in identical chambers.

  A rush of relief surges through me.

  I press my face against the glass on the side facing Digory, rubbing the pane to get his attention. But he’s staring straight ahead, not noticing me. His face is sullen, the blue in his eyes so drained they look almost gray. His upper teeth grind his lower lip. Every few seconds a ripple goes through the hard lines of his jaw.

  All around me, his expression is mirrored on the faces of the others. Cypress, who’s in the chamber on the other side of me, chews her hair, pacing back and forth, mumbling words only she can hear. Gideon cowers in the chamber to her right; his glasses magnify his glazed eyes, which resemble hollow eggshells. To his right, and directly across from me, Ophelia’s face is pressed against the glass just like mine, her eyes brimming with fear instead of confidence, as if she’s a reflection of what I’m feeling inside.

  They all look like old shoes worn well past their prime, having spent years tramping through rough terrain, now whittled down to thin soles. And that’s how I must look to them. I think about the holograms of Mrs. Bledsoe and Cole, and can’t help wonder what nightmares the other Recruits faced in the labyrinth.

  Digory’s eyes finally meet mine. Are you okay? he mouths.

  I nod despite everything, drawing strength from his gaze. Are you? I mouth back.

  I am now, he says silently.

  His lips curve into a sad smile and he presses his hand against the glass, just on the opposite side of mine. I imagine the barrier that separates us isn’t there, and I can almost feel the warmth of his skin. For a moment, I’m not alone anymore, and things are a little better.