by Melissa Faye
“Vonna, it’s Charlie,” I said, trying to maintain an even, nonthreatening tone. “Yami’s friend. We’ve been looking for you...”
“No thank you, sir,” she said. It was that same robotic voice all the NBs used. My heart sank. Yami told me all about Vonna. She had changed so much from all of this.
“Please, Vonna,” I said. I looked over the table as if I was deciding what to take. “We have to talk!”
“No, sir, we do not,” she said. She tugged at the collar around her neck, perhaps subconsciously, and I stared at it for a moment. Why was she scared of me?
I slowly walked to the side of the table to get closer to Vonna. I reached my arm out to touch hers.
“Please, Vonna. I want to help you. I want to get us all out of here.” She said nothing. “Yami is out there. She’s trying to fix this, I know she is.”
Vonna shook her head and gently pulled her arm loose. “I can’t be seen...”
“Where will you be after the movie?” I whispered. I pulled my arm back and shoved it into my pocket as if that was the plan all along.
“Someone will see me!” Vonna said, her voice trembling. “After the movie I’m off. I’ll be at my tent.”
“Tell me right now when I can see you,” I said. “Tell me right now or I’ll get someone’s attention, I swear.”
Vonna looked up at me for a second, and I could see the tears in her eyes. She tugged at her collar again, and looked at her wristband. I could see it buzzing. Something happened, and she physically winced.
“What’s going on? I won’t tell anyone, I’m sorry.” I spoke quickly now, my own voice shaking at the sight of this girl in sudden pain.
“I’ll find you,” Vonna said. “Get away!” She turned and scurried off. I stayed at the table for a few moments longer, half looking over the options and half following her with my eyes. I looked back at the group of Chancellor Lorenzos. Like before, the youngest one couldn’t take his eyes off Vonna. Except for the split second when his eyes turned to me. They narrowed to slits, then returned to normal. I felt an eerie chill run down my spine, and backed away from the table. A Chancellor shouldn’t be a threat to me, not anymore. Not since they found out I was a Breeder. But I couldn’t stop thinking of that momentary glare.
I TOSSED AND TURNED in my bed. My skin crawled. I couldn’t stop seeing Vonna, fine one moment then quivering in pain the next. Something about those collars caused pain for NBs. It was a punishment. She was in trouble for talking to me, or maybe for touching me. Or maybe for something else – how could I tell? I was desperate to see her again. I knew she would work with us if we could only find a time to talk.
And the young Chancellor staring at her. I pictured him in my mind, staring towards Vonna. It wasn’t the same haughty glance I was used to from one of the Chancellor’s clones. He wasn’t looking at her with disgust or malice. He was interested in her for some reason. She caught his eye, and he couldn’t look away.
I woke to a bright, sunny day; not a cloud in the sky. I opened the holoscreen on my B-Band and looked at the day’s schedule. Before lunch, it was recommended that people walk around, enjoy the day, and make new friends. This was a common “activity” that seemed to fill in times where actual events weren’t planned. I picked up a glass of water from my nightstand to take a few sips and knocked a slip of paper onto the floor.
It was the flyer Jacob, the leader of the strange religious cult, gave me the night before. They had a long list of activities planned for the next month. Many activities coincided with the Hideaway-sanctioned events. Jacob encouraged “believers” to meet together at the events to get to know one another better and talk with others about their cause. I sipped the water, trying to wash a sudden foul taste out of my mouth.
This morning, Jacob organized a small social hour for the group and those potentially interested in the group from 11-12. If I was going to get more involved, and if I was going to collect intel, this is where I needed to go.
I messaged Mallory, and she agreed to meet me there. Zheng was less interested, but convinced when I promised to go bicycle riding with her after lunch.
Mallory and I walked to the event together. It was held in a small park several blocks away from the main lawn in the town center. Twenty people were already gathered. I looked at Mallory’s face, and saw a general disgust I hadn’t expected.
“Are you ok?” I said, nudging her and keeping my tone light. I was practicing being the model citizen everyone wanted me to be. Plus I liked Mallory, and was confused by her poor mood.
“I’m ok,” she said. “I can do this.”
We approached the people in the park who milled about, talking and laughing like most of the other events I attended. I looked back at Mallory and suddenly realized her disgust – she hadn’t just left a spouse behind. She left her wife behind. What would it mean for Mallory to be a breeder? And how would she handle listening to Jacob’s pro-breeding, ancestors of a new generation speech?
Mallory was a few steps ahead, so I reached for her hand and pulled her back.
“I’m sorry,” I said sheepishly. I stuffed my hands in my pockets. We stood on the outskirts of the group, and a few people stared with mischevious smiles. To them, we must look like a blossoming couple. I glared at one person and he looked away quickly.
“It’s ok, Charlie –“
“I should have thought about this,” I said. “It was dumb.”
“It’s fine.” Mallory smiled. “Really, it’s ok. I want to end government-run breeding programs. Not just for me, but for all the other people here who left someone behind. Or who don’t want to be locked away to procreate. I don’t want to listen to that man, but I think we can learn from being here.”
I looked at Mallory’s face closely. She was determined. She had a quivering smile, like she couldn’t decide if she was excited to do something or wanted to run away as fast as she could.
We walked towards the group finally and began to mingle. Zheng appeared a little while later and honed in on me like sonar. A moment later she was at my side and pulled at my elbow flirtatiously.
“How’s it going?” she said. I smiled at her. I made a new decision right then. Zheng was going to flirt with me, and I wasn’t going to be a jerk to her. She didn’t know how I was feeling, and I couldn’t blame her for wanting to go along with what we were all forced to be doing.
“It’s good, Zheng,” I said. “Mallory is here somewhere, too.” I poked my head around until I could point her out. “Remember, we’re mostly here to see what the cult is doing. They’re an enemy to our cause if they really believe they’ve been chosen to be here. But I don’t think all of them really believe it.”
“I was thinking about it too. It just seems so easy, doesn’t it? Believing we’re better than everyone else makes it easier to watch the NBs serve us. It makes it so much easier to play games and make friends and only focus on finding your partner. It’s a nice escape.” She looked at me as I stared. “Not that I want to be part of it!” she exclaimed.
“Of course not,” I said with a grin. Zheng spent a lot of time acting like everyone else – lovestruck teenagers bent on finding a new relationship. But she was thinking more about the implications of this life than I had realized. I resolved to give her more credit and rely on her more.
We split up. I headed towards a small group of people surrounding Jacob. He was in another suit and tie. I wasn’t sure where those came from. My Hideaway clothes were mostly jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers. Maybe Jacob requested this once he found his passion for leadership.
“Charlie, isn’t it?” Jacob said with a broad smile and handshake. “I’m glad to see you!”
The others looked at me with pleasant, but empty, smiles.
“I wanted to see what this is all about,” I said. “What have you been talking about?”
“Jacob was telling us more about Adam and Eve,” a woman next to me said. She inched away from me as she spoke, as if afraid to catch my heathenism. “
How everything we’re doing here is just the start of something.”
I wondered if that was all Jacob talked about and shook my head.
“Technically, that’s right,” I said. “But I’m not convinced that makes us better than anyone else.”
“Of course!” said a man standing next to Jacob. “Not better than. Never better than. Just selected to be here, in this moment, doing this work.”
“Selected,” I repeated slowly. “What do you mean?”
“We discussed this, didn’t we Charlie?” Jacob said. I detected a hint of impatience in his voice. He was holding back anger. “How can we believe we’re here by chance? When everyone here is healthy, willing, and able?”
“Not everyone is willing,” I said. “I just spoke with a new friend. She left her wife behind, because her wife can’t have children. But even if she could...”
The others turned to Jacob to hear his thoughts. Before the breeding camp, before Etta’s pregnancy, heterosexuality was just one of a spectrum of sexualities. People loved one or more people of any gender without judgment. Without children as a possibility, those bigotries had disappeared.
“I would say if she is Chosen, she will do what is right,” Jacob said. “Don’t worry, friends. She will come around.”
“I don’t think she will,” I said. I felt my face flush with anger. “And I don’t think it’s the government’s place to make her.”
“Is it the government, or the gods?” Jacob asked. He spoke more loudly now, and the corners of his mouth turned into a sneer. I never saw anything but patience and kindness on his face before now. “The gods have chosen her to procreate. With a man. So that’s what she will do.”
“But what if she doesn’t?” I said. “Are you saying that at some point, she’ll just be compelled to be a completely different person?”
“She will,” Jacob said. “Of course she will.”
“And if she doesn’t,” the man next to Jacob chimed in slowly with more than a hint of malice, “then she is going against what the gods want. What our society needs. If she won’t do what’s right, we’ll make her. And we’ll make you, too -”
It happened without warning, though I watched it happen as if from afar in slow motion. I brought my fist back behind my shoulder, and looked on as it arced through the air, swinging into the man’s left cheek and jaw with all the force and anger I had gathered over the past few days. The man’s head lurched to the side as my fist followed through, swinging his head to my left until I found myself turned to the side with tight, aching knuckles.
Time returned to normal as people rushed over to us. Jacob stepped back, out of harm’s way, but several others grabbed my arms and pulled me back away from the man I had punched. He fell to the ground with a thud, clutching his face. I watched his face darken and thought he was about to come after me. I tugged at the people trying to hold me back. I needed to defend myself. But something worse happened.
The man I punched in the face stood up slowly and calmly.
“Are you sure you belong here, Charlie?” he asked. His tone was rational. I was the one flailing and struggling like a monster, throwing around the people holding my arms tightly. “Do you think you fit in here? Did the gods choose you, Charlie, or have you been brought here to test us?”
I felt dozens of eyes on me as I tried to calm myself. The rage boiling in my gut only spat and billowed smoke up into my lungs, but I took slow breaths to at least look like I was calmer than I was. I saw Mallory out of the corner of my eye, steadily approaching, but shook my head. She backed off.
I let the people surrounding me pull me to the ground, where I sat back and stared up at the man I had hit. He gave me a look of contempt, but quickly turned it into one of sympathy.
“You may need to do some soul searching,” Jacob said. “Charlie, you are here for a reason. Like my friend said, we thought you were here because you were Chosen. But what have you been Chosen for, Charlie? Are you one of us, or are you something else entirely?”
I closed my eyes. People circled us, mumbling and whispering. Jacob began to preach to the group about my indiscretions and how, he said, the Chosens could “help” those who didn’t yet believe. I finally felt my strength return and hobbled away. Zheng came over to me and squeezed my arm tightly. We walked out of the park and were halfway down the street when my B-Band vibrated.
“We need to review your performance and placement here. Meet me at the location indicated on your map. –Lee”
I showed Zheng.
“Is he in charge here?” she asked. “I don’t understand. Are you getting in trouble? Do you have to join the NBs? Will you be banished like they used to do? Or do you –“
I zoned out. The holoscreen directed me towards a building next to the gate where I first entered the Hideaway. I headed there mindlessly, ignoring the stares that followed me down the road. Word was traveling fast, and my reputation was dropping quickly.
Chapter 11 – Yami
Our first evening of basic training was more physical than I expected. I had hoped to sit down for a boring orientation or at least meet people and get a better sense for the layout of the camp. Instead, we joined a dozen other recruits in different stages of their training. We all wore the gray uniforms and boots we’d been provided with. Mine felt uncomfortably new and crisp.
The Sarge led us through drill after drill. We ran two miles to warm up. I was never athletic, but being taller gave me an advantage and Gianna and I pushed each other to keep up with the quick pace. We lagged around the back of the pack. I was too stubborn to complain or ask for breaks. Training would be good for me. I would get in shape and learn some combat moves I could take back to HQ.
Our two mile warm up left me beat, but it was only the beginning. We did wind sprints back and forth across a field, pivoting back and forth at different lines. After that, we practiced running in different formations. I had never run that much in such a short time, and felt my lungs gasping for air. I wheezed loudly. People looked at me and snickered, but I couldn’t hide it.
Gianna wasn’t faring any better. She was slowing down quickly, and couldn’t keep up with the formation drills. Again and again, Sarge blew a whistle and we returned to a formation we completed incorrectly before, or switched back to wind sprints. The session ended with a two mile cool down.
The Sarge dismissed everyone in the group except Gianna and myself. We stood at attention, as we had seen others do, though we couldn’t maintain the posture everyone else had. I alternated between standing straight up and leaning forward with my palms on my knees. I panted heavily while the Sarge spoke with us.
“Tonight’s session focused on endurance. Both of you are new, so I expected you to struggle to keep up. I’m impressed that you lasted as long as you did, even if it was sheer stubbornness. You’ll complete endurance practice four nights per week initially, then switch to twice per week as your endurance grows. During the days, you’ll have combat training and weaponry classes.”
He looked us over with disdain.
“Go back to the barracks,” he said. “Wake up time is 6am. Thirty minutes for showers and cleaning your space, thirty minutes for breakfast, then training starts at 7am. You’re dismissed.”
We hobbled back to the barracks and barely found our beds before collapsing. I had a fit of giggles while we walked, both from exhaustion and the sheer comedic value of the situation. If Charlie could see me now...he would enjoy watching me struggle through my run. I would never stop trying to keep up. And he would laugh at the sight.
THE WAKE-UP CALL SEEMED to arrive only a moment after I laid my head down on my pillow. It startled me awake, and I watched as the other Gray Suits scurried around. Showers had to be fast for everyone to fit one in, and I needed one desperately after the night before. I wished for more time to assemble my hair into something presentable, but there wasn’t any. I made my bed neatly, following along while someone else made hers, and scrambled to get dressed and put my hair up befor
e sprinting to breakfast.
Combat training became my favorite part of the day. I spent years of my life bottling my tension and fear, and I finally had a release. It was a better fit for me over jogging. I wasn’t just working out. I was working out and hitting people.
We wore gloves on our hands for sparring at first, and eventually just taped our knuckles. Our classes were full of more experienced trainees and I was repeatedly beaten to the ground. I got up every time and kept swinging. Gianna and I admired ourselves after only a week. We were leaner and stronger. We laughed as we flexed our muscles for one another. If only Charlie could see me now.
As we progressed through jabs and hooks, the Sarge moved us to kicking and combination punches. There were large leather bags full of sand hanging from the ceilings of the training rooms, and I could kick or punch them with all my might, thinking back to everything the Chancellor was doing. I thought back to the day Sven was killed. And the time the Chancellor put me in a rehabilitation brain-washing class that nearly broke me.
Gianna and I had limited time to talk about HQ, but we knew what we needed to do. We were slowly getting a sense for where the Gray Suits’ loyalties lay. We understood how the training facilities worked. There was more distrust and fear than I realized, and the facilities pushed all the unhappiness and frustration together. And they trained us to fight back, not thinking about how we might use our new skills.
The biggest hole in our mission was figuring out how the training facility was structured. The woman we first met, the Captain, seemed to be in charge. But the training center ran effortlessly and she spent most of her time giving feedback and doling out discipline as needed. We couldn’t tell how she contacted the government, or who she reported to.
The Captain was a startling figure around the facility. She walked quickly, with purpose, and spoke in a firm, clipped voice tinged with sarcasm and disgust. But even more strangely, she never became upset when someone was caught speaking about the rebels or expressing distrust in the government. She would hold a discipline meeting with them, but three people I asked said she let them off with a government speech performed in monotone and a reminder not to say those things. It was a poorly kept secret: the Captain’s loyalties wavered.
