The Culling (The Culling Trilogy Book 1)

by Ramona Finn

  “My tech?”

  He nodded. “Well, because of what you can do with your tech.”

  Her eyebrows furrowed. “Culling?”

  Kupier barked out a surprised laugh. “God, no. Didn’t you see the video? Yeah, I’m very firmly against culling.” He jabbed a thumb behind him and flashed a smile her way.

  “What for, then?”

  “For your ability to access the Authority Database.”

  “You want me to take out the virus you think Haven implanted in the database?” Her tone was dripping with skepticism, but he didn’t let it bother him.

  “No. I want you to destroy the entire thing.”

  This time, it was Glade who laughed. She tugged her hand from Kupier’s and dug the heel of it into her eye again. “Kupier. That’s insane. Even if I would do that, which you couldn’t force me to do, there’s no telling if I even could. Not without direct access to the Database. Any attack done remotely would immediately be shut down by our defense team on the Station.”

  “I know.”

  “Then what the heck was the plan?” Her voice was frustrated and exhausted, and just a little bit fascinated. She was looking at him like she’d never seen him before, and maybe, in a way, she hadn’t. He’d let her see his goofy side, his light-hearted side, his loving side. Yes, he’d shown her his stern side, his leader side, and even his warrior side. But he’d never shown her this, his stone-cold determined side.

  The Authority had alienated his planet. They were attempting to weed out any person they wanted, with no powers of checks and balances at all. They’d murdered Luce. And now Kupier was two steps away from pulling the plug on their asses. She could see it in his eyes, he was sure of it.

  “I know where the mainframe is.”

  She took a step back from him and blinked. “No one does.”

  He shrugged. “I do.”

  Glade cocked her hip out to one side and lifted an eyebrow. “Fine. Where is it?”

  He was tempted to mimic her stance, but he knew how insane his answer was going to sound to her, and he didn’t want her to have any more reason to doubt him. “Earth.”

  Now Glade tossed her hands into the air and really did laugh. She dragged her hair away from her face as she paced a few steps away and back. “Oh my God, Kupier, you’ve got to be kidding me. Who’s been telling you spooky bedtime stories? Earth? For the love of— Earth?!”

  He shrugged. “If you think about it tactically, it’s the perfect place to hide it.”

  “Yeah,” she said, and popped that hip out again. “Except for the fact that it’s an uninhabitable wasteland. Toxic, destroyed, poisonous, and barren. But sure, if you say so, yeah! Perfect hiding spot.”

  Kupier sighed. “Parts of it are. But most of it is completely fine. Perfect, actually. The Authority live there, as well as about 400 others. Elite and rich people who’ve bought their way into paradise. And that’s where they keep the Database mainframe.”

  She stared at him now. Just stood still and stared. Her voice was deflated and slightly sad when she spoke again. “You’re insane, Kupier. Brainwashed. I – God, I didn’t realize how crazy this all was until just now.”

  Kupier gripped her shoulders like he had so often in the past and moved her aside to get to the monitor.

  “Just give me a second.”

  He fumbled around on the server, looking for the next thing he wanted to show her. He cursed when he found that the file was locked. He should have had someone unlock it. He should have known that she’d have to see it to believe him.

  Glade sighed deeply and leaned over him, her hair sweeping down over one of his shoulders. He watched, equally impressed and intimidated by her skills on the computer as she hacked into the video in a matter of seconds.

  This one was just a series of images with authentic timestamps at the bottom.

  “Our ships aren’t traceable. So we’ve been able to get pretty damn close to the Earth,” he told her as her brow pulled low over her eyes.

  He didn’t watch the screen. He knew what he would see there. Instead, he watched her. The upside-down reflections of Earth in her eyes. She frowned hard. And then harder. She’d been expecting to see Earth as a burned-out hull. A sunbaked desert, destroyed from nuclear bombs and climate change, these being the only signs left from the humans who’d once inhabited it.

  But that’s not what she was seeing, he knew. She was seeing images taken less than a year ago. Green and lush landscape. An entire hemisphere of Earth had weathered the human storm, and was fast recovering. There were rivers and lakes of freshwater. There was even an ice cap in one of the pictures. Autumn colors in another.

  Glade clicked out of the video and turned to face Kupier. “You’re telling me that you want me to – willingly – go with you to Earth. Land there, no less. Hope I don’t grow a third eye from the poisonous atmosphere. Manually hack into the Authority Database. Destroy it. Thus destroying all integrated tech and bringing down our entire system of government?”

  He shrugged. “More or less.”

  Glade blinked at him exactly the same way that she had when she’d called him crazy. Kupier knew when to fold. She needed rest. And time. She trusted him, but she didn’t believe him. That much was clear. And there was no way to force her to believe. Just like there was no way to force her to do what he asked. If he tossed her on a ship, brought her to Earth, and plugged her in to the mainframe, with one line of code she could have the entire solar system’s weapons pointed straight at his heart. She needed to believe in what they were doing for it to work. He needed her to believe.

  And right now, she didn’t look like she was going to believe him. She looked like she needed to rest. Kupier sighed, rose up from where he’d been crouching, and took her hand again, leading her out of the bunker. He considered their path back to his mother’s house and didn’t go the way they’d come. He’d wanted simply to get her here as fast as they could, but now he wanted a less risky path.

  He led them back through the sixth level, through the cavern. And even twenty years later, there was still evidence of the bombs that Haven had dropped on Charon. Fallen stalactites, semi-cave-ins. There were huge crystals that had fallen from the wall and smashed. There’d been no reason to waste time or energy on clean-up of this room. Not when so much else had to be righted.

  He led Glade through to a back staircase that led directly to the third floor. The market floor. It wasn’t the fastest way back to his house, but it was the safest. Her hand clasped in his, she followed behind him as he wove through the darkened and quiet booths. Somewhere across the humongous level, he could hear some vendor opening up their booth. He could smell a savory sweet baked good rising in an oven somewhere. That brought a small smile to his face. It had been three days since they’d returned to Charon with a shipment of supplies. None of which Charon desperately needed, but all of which they’d use. The next few weeks at the market were going to be filled with treasures and treats like whatever baked good he could smell at that very moment.

  They made it to another small alley that led down to the fourth level, and they were almost home. In fact, he could see his front door when Glade tugged at his hand.

  He came to a stop and faced her. He’d never seen her eyes look so black before. Like if he leaned forward just a touch, he’d fall in and never stop falling. Her hair swam around her shoulders as she looked up at him. And that frown. He opened his mouth to say something, but she beat him to it.

  “Do you believe all of that?”

  “Yes.” He’d answered her without a second’s hesitation.

  She frowned even further. “You don’t have any questions about any of it. There’s nothing that you think might have been skewed in a certain direction? You think that all of it is undeniable fact?”

  He paused, gathering his thoughts. He didn’t see the look she gave him while he considered her question. He didn’t see that the care with which he answered her showed her far more than that video had. “I sup
pose no fact is ‘undeniable.’ People get all mixed up between truth and fact and belief. But yes, I believe that that evidence incriminates Haven. I believe that he has motives for altering the Culling program. And though I don’t understand what those motives are, exactly, I believe that he’s been successful at getting what he wants.”

  His eyes flicked up to hers, blue into black, and he pulled the marble out of his pocket, clutching it as if he could squeeze the truth right out of it. “And I believe that the entire system is faulty. Not just because of Haven’s lie, but because you can’t create a computer program that simplifies who gets to live and who gets to die. It doesn’t work that way. Trial by jury—”

  She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes, but he continued speaking anyway.

  “Trial by jury, though rife with faults, is the best answer we have for protecting the people of this solar system, and holding the violent accountable for their actions. It’s not perfect, but it’s infinitely better than government sanctioned mass murder of the innocent.” His voice was getting calmer and calmer, and for one butterfly of a moment, Kupier could hear Luce’s voice overlap with his own. He sounded like his brother. “I don’t care which geniuses created the Culling program. I don’t care how airtight the Authority says it is, or you say it is. In the end, we’ve created an algorithm that takes human life. That plays God. And not only do I reject that… I fight against that.”

  Her eyes flattened as they looked off over his shoulder, into the distance. Kupier could practically see her thoughts racing. He knew how a Datapoint’s mind worked. He’d studied it. She was picking up each piece of new information, turning it over in her brain. He knew that she’d put the pieces together in a million different arrangements before she decided what made sense to her. She was logical, analytical.

  But, he realized – as he looked down at her in an old green hoodie of his, with her hair an inky slide all around her, her eyes ever so slightly squinted in concentration – she was also emotional. He’d been told that Datapoints were like computers. They were as devoid of emotions as a machine. But not once had he experienced that in Glade.

  She could be cold, sure, but that was just on the surface. Below that, she was teeming with feeling. He knew it just from looking at her. But now that he knew her so much better, he could practically feel it coming off her in waves. The very first thing he’d known about her was that she’d helped her younger friend escape the Ferrymen ship. The second thing he’d known about her was her loyalty to the way she was raised. He’d even seen her exhibit loyalty to Sullia.

  He’d seen her rage. He’d seen her be brave. He’d seen her be sweet. God, he’d seen her laugh. She wasn’t a robot, or a computer, or a machine. She was a human.

  But looking down at her, he watched her eyes tighten more, her hand scraping over the dead tech on her arm. She was forcing down her humanity. She was making herself be a Datapoint before his very eyes.

  “Kupier…” she started.

  “No,” he cut her off immediately, closing the distance between them with one step. She was a human, he was a human, and emotions were real. There was more in this world than just information. She needed to know everything.

  Kupier could feel the heat kicking off of her as his chest bumped against her, crowding her against the alley wall. First her brow furrowed as she glared up at him, but seeing the expression on his face, her eyebrows smoothed even as her breath became choppy.

  “No,” he said again as he brought his hands to her shoulders, then down all the way to her wrists. “Don’t decide how you feel right this second.” His hands went up her arms to her shoulders. He dropped his head so that there wasn’t room for even a breath between them. Kupier blinked and realized that he’d tangled one of his hands into the silky hair at the back of her head. He was tipping her face up. “Promise me you’ll wait to decide how you feel. Promise me you’ll take your time.”

  His face was so close to hers that their noses could have touched if either of them had moved. Neither of them did. Except for his eyes, which searched hers. He thought again of blackholes, of being sucked in to a different world. And then, as one of his hands slid to her waist, he thought of jumping in headfirst.

  “Okay,” she said. “I promise.”

  And then she jerked her head out of his grasp and shoved him back a stumbling inch. He could have sworn that he’d felt an intentional elbow to his ribs as she strode through the alley and into the door of his house.

  Kupier watched her go. He dragged a hand over his face and let out a long, slow breath that ended on a chuckle. He had to laugh at himself.

  Leader of the Ferrymen. Tying himself in knots over a Datapoint.

  But, as soon as he had the thought, he dismissed it as wrong. She wasn’t a just a Datapoint. Just like he wasn’t a just a Ferryman.

  She was Glade, and he was Kupier.

  Chapter Twelve

  I didn’t believe it. Not any of it.

  I lay in my bed until I heard Sullia stirring and then got up to have breakfast with Kupier’s family. I sat across the breakfast table from Kupier, felt his eyes on my downturned face, and still, I didn’t believe it.

  I, of all people in this solar system, knew exactly how easy it was to alter and edit any piece of information to look a certain way. I was a computer genius. And it wouldn’t have even taken someone of my level to have altered what I’d seen last night.

  The bottom line was that it didn’t make sense to me. I knew Jan Ernst Haven. He’d never once said anything about Culling ‘rogue thinkers.’ He believed in the system. The true Culling system. The one that Din Io had conceived.

  Murderous or rogue?

  Memories of my father tugged at me. He’d never seemed murderous.

  Rogue.

  No. I didn’t believe it. The Authority wasn’t that compromised. Jan Ernst Haven wasn’t that backwards. That evil. I didn’t believe it. I was surprised, though, at how torn my disbelief made me feel. I swallowed down Owa’s delicious food and acknowledged, with a lurch in my stomach, the part of me that wanted to believe it. I wanted to help Kupier – because he was Kupier. Not because I cared at all about the Ferrymen’s cause.

  Or their stupid alternative history that didn’t make sense at all. The same one that would mean that Culling, what I was trained to do, was murder.

  No. I wanted to help because Kupier had given an eclipse as a ‘thank you’ to his crew. Because he’d laid down weapons. Because he was currently letting his little sister shove half of a frosted roll into his mouth while she cackled with laughter.

  My stomach tightened.

  Kupier turned, laughing and wiping his mouth with a napkin, and caught my eye. Those half slices of blue had me swallowing hard. For a half second, I was transported back to the alley last night. To the fan of his breath on my face, the electric blue of his eyes at that distance. God. What the hell had that been?

  Across from me, Kupier winked, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking about, and something pressed against my foot underneath the table. I narrowed my eyes at him. He was flirting with me. Even a trained Datapoint could recognize that.

  “Shoot,” Owa muttered as she looked across the room at the rudimentary screen they kept in the wall. It was the fourth or fifth time I’d seen the tablet short out since I’d come to stay with them. “Kup, can you take a look at this before you leave? I can barely get this thing to show me the time anymore.”

  She rose and yanked it out of the wall, banging it against one hand as she did.

  Kupier made wide eyes at me and we both tried not to laugh. I was very familiar with the extent of his computer skills.

  “Here,” I said without thinking, reaching up for the tablet. Yet, it was very clear that I had not been allowed to touch any piece of tech since landing on Charon, and everything besides that tablet had been cleared out of the house.

  Owa’s eyes searched Kupier’s and she hesitated before handing it over. But seconds later, the tablet landed in my hand.
I felt Sullia’s gaze burning into me.

  But I didn’t look up at any of them. I fooled around on the tablet for less than a minute, removed about thirty viruses, reloaded the operating system, and cut out a few of the junk programs that had been slowing everything down.

  When I handed it back to Owa a few minutes later, it was with a wry smile on my face. “I thought everyone on Charon was supposed to be a tech genius?”

  She quirked a quick smile at me. “We all have our strengths. Thanks for this.”

  She put the tablet back in its place on the wall and, on the way back to her place at the table, piled a little more food on my plate. When I looked up, I could feel both Kupier and Sullia’s gazes on me, but I didn’t meet either.

  “Wake up.”

  I felt a hard press into my shoulder. And then a more vicious jab.

  “Now.”

  “Jesus, Sullia,” I growled, rolling up into a sitting position and squinting through the darkness.

  She ignored my tone, and tossed my sweatshirt and shoes right onto the bed with me. “We’re leaving.”

  “What?” I scrambled up. “What are you talking about?”

  “When you fooled around with their tablet this morning, I realized they didn’t have them locked to our fingerprints. I hot-wired one of the doors of a rover skip back at the landing pad and we have about thirty minutes before it takes off.”

  “What good would a rover skip do us?” Rovers were patrol skips. They never left the orbit of their planets. They usually weren’t even equipped to.

  “There’s three other skips in the belly of the rover skip. I checked. One of them is long-range. Equipped with artificial black holes.”

  My heart leapt and plummeted at the same second. This was real. This was actually a way off of this colony. Back to the Station. We could be back to the Station in a week. Away from the Ferrymen. From the constant danger. My hand grazed over my arm and cheek. I’d have my tech back. The thought was both exhilarating and deflating at the same time.

  But I’d be home. In my own world. Where things made sense.