The Culling (The Culling Trilogy Book 1)

by Ramona Finn

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah. Well, I’ve got about three days’ worth of interrogations under my belt that prove she’s wrong.” I took a bite of my food. “She’s just trying to freak people out about the Ferrymen. Make them seem bigger and badder than they are. You know, that they’re so bad, they even got me to switch sides. But that she withstood all that pressure. She wants to build herself up.”

  Cast nodded, but his eyes were on his food again. “That’s – ah – just not what she’s saying.”

  I waited, unwilling to prod him any further. This reticence thing he had going on was starting to get on my nerves.

  He sighed again, like he really didn’t want to do what he was about to do. This time, he kept his eyes on his food even as he spoke. “She says that you switched sides because one of the Ferrymen seduced you. That you two were sleeping together, and now you’ll do anything for him.”

  Cast’s cheeks got redder and his voice got quieter the more he spoke. I kind of felt bad for the kid. Or at least I would have if it hadn’t been for the fact that my blood was boiling so hot that I felt like I could have breathed fire.

  “Are. You. Kidding. Me?”

  Cast must have sensed that it was a rhetorical question because he didn’t answer.

  I wasn’t insulted at the idea that Kupier and I might have slept together. We hadn’t. Not even close. But if we had, it wouldn’t have been anyone’s business. Least of all Sullia’s. What upset me the most was the implication that I would bend over backwards, completely changing my alliances and my beliefs, all because I’d slept with someone.

  But most of all, I was pissed off because rumors like this could get me sent straight back to interrogation. I shivered. I didn’t think I’d survive another session like the one I’d gone through when I’d come back to the Station.

  And, what was worse? I’d admitted to liking Kupier. My credibility to say that I hadn’t slept with him was shot. At this point, if the rumor made it to Haven, he’d likely think I’d lied to him.

  When I hadn’t.

  I was shaking as I rose up from my seat.

  “Glade,” Cast spoke very slowly. “Where are you going?”

  “To kick Sullia’s ass.”

  “Okay, no. Wait!” he called after me, and I heard his bowl clatter to the floor. “Let’s just think about this! Let’s go find Dahn real quick! He’ll know what to do.”

  My blood went to ice as I strode through one hallway and then the next. She was usually in the sparring chamber this time of night. I knew I’d find her there.

  Dahn was the last person I wanted to turn to right now. I thought of his voice in my head. His face, the last thing I’d seen before I’d blacked out. I thought of the brush of his knuckles against mine.

  Yeah. I really, really didn’t want to mix Dahn up in these rumors. He was the only person in this entire Station who didn’t doubt me. He’d stood by me.

  I’ve got you.

  I couldn’t lose Dahn, my credibility, and get tossed back into interrogation all because Sullia had added one more bit of subterfuge into whatever grand plan she was concocting.

  I tossed my hair back over my shoulders as I stepped into the doorway of the sparring chamber. There. Finally. I thought of the horse. Proud and unstoppable.

  “Sullia!” My voice rang out, and everyone who’d been sparring, ten or twelve Datapoints, turned to look at me. And then back to Sullia. And then back to me.

  Clearly, they’d heard the rumors.

  Sullia whipped around as if she’d been expecting me. And hell, maybe she had.

  “What?” she snapped, adjusting the tape around her knuckles.

  I stalked toward her. “I heard you might have some questions you wanted to ask me.”

  She’d looked as bad as I had when we’d returned from the Ferrymen, but two months back at the Station and she’d retained her natural glow. I noticed the streaks in her hair were dyed a deep pink now. It suited her. She looked like a queen, standing there, gorgeous and furious and in a fighting stance. For one horrible second, I wondered whether or not she would have stumbled during the Culling the way I had.

  I pushed the thought aside. It didn’t matter. She hadn’t been chosen for the Culling. Dahn and I had been. And that was exactly why she was spreading rumors about me right now. She was jealous as hell. With nowhere to put the emotion.

  Sullia scoffed. But she wasn’t foolish enough to turn her back on me. “I have absolutely nothing to say to you.”

  “Funny.” I took another step toward her. I could have reached out and touched her. “Because it seems like you have a lot to say about me.”

  Something flickered in her eyes, but it was gone too fast for me to interpret it. “The truth hurts, doesn’t it?”

  I scowled at her sickly-sweet tone. Even now, straight to my face, she was going to pretend like she wasn’t lying.

  I heard the telltale sounds of people gathering in the doorway behind me and I also heard a familiar ‘Glade!’, but I ignored it all.

  “I’m confused. Are you trying to get me sent back to interrogation because you’re threatened by how much better a Datapoint I am, or just because you’re a sadistic psycho?”

  That same thing flashed again in her eyes. She smirked. “You might have everyone fooled, Glade, including the Ferrymen. But you can’t fool me. I know what you did.” Her eyes landed on someone behind me and then came back to me. There was a knowing smirk on her face. “I know you slept with him. I know where your REAL loyalties lie.”

  People gasped and whispered behind me, and I continued to ignore it. “Sullia. I don’t care what you say about me and Kupier. Who cares? But you wanna talk about loyalties? When all you did was suck up to the Ferrymen every chance you got? When all you cared about was avoiding any sort of pain or confrontation? When you’re the one who passed up the chance to escape?”

  That last part was the part that did it. I saw something behind her beautiful face snap. She was embarrassed that she hadn’t tried to escape with me and Cast. She hadn’t wanted people to know. And I’d just screamed it out in a gym filled to the brim with people.

  I blocked the punch she sent jetting straight toward my face. And the next. And the next. The fourth caught me by surprise, right under the ribs, and I doubled over. Not before I kicked her knee out from under her, though. Sullia went down hard and I heard something crack against the mat.

  A stabbing pain in my calf from her claw-like hand had me howling and kicking her hard in the ribs. Her face was a mask of rage as she rolled away from me.

  I thought of the horse as she charged me, and my roll away from her was graceful and natural. I parried each of the combinations she sent my way. She was fast, but so was I. Let her tire herself out.

  She got in two blows to my cheek and I got a good one in on her body before she fell to the floor on all fours, panting. I wondered, for a brief second, if she was done.

  And then it hit me. The pain behind my eyes. White hot and blinding. Immediately, I matched her stance on the ground. I smashed my teeth together and screamed against the agony.

  I heard her in my head. Almost laughing in pleasure. She was using her tech against me. She was – Jesus – she was trying to cull me. Right now. My brain held on, unwilling to be ripped from its socket, and I used my tech to smash her backwards.

  The blow was mental, but she reacted physically. Flying backwards and holding the tech that sat over one side of her forehead. Infuriated, shaking from the pain, I pushed again, this time harder.

  Sullia screamed, both inside of my head and in my ears. For a moment, her fingers dug into the tech on her forehead. I watched with sick fascination as she looked almost like she was about to tear it out of herself.

  I pulled my tech back from hers because Sullia looked insane, and I had no idea what she was about to do next. But she didn’t waste a second.

  She was suddenly on me, knocking me to the ground and slamming one hand around my throat. I grabbed her throat rig
ht back and she gasped, the sound being my only warning before her tech was back and the pain became unbearable. I knew I wasn’t breathing but I didn’t care. I could only care about getting this horrible pain to stop.

  I wasn’t sure if she was trying to cull me or if she was attempting to fry my integrated tech, but either way, it felt like she was ripping my sanity away from me, pulse by pulse. My arms jolted when I didn’t tell them to. My thoughts twisted with something dark. Something horrible and void. I tried to yank back, to get control of my tech, but her fingers squeezed down around my throat and things went spotty. The pain was growing in my head and that horrible, dark blankness was twisting with my consciousness again. I couldn’t hear my own tech over it. Something was slicing into my brain like a knife. Something was tearing me open from the inside out.

  I didn’t have the energy or the power to attack her back. Things were getting fuzzy and blank. I couldn’t even feel her fingers at my neck anymore. I was melting into nothing. This was how it happened.

  And then I felt it. A nudge in my brain. Not evil. Not harsh. Not harmful. Just a nudge.

  Come on, Glade. You can do better than this.

  It was Dahn. In my thoughts. I felt the familiar bunching power of his tech. It was how he mentally stretched himself before a Culling simulation. And then I was stretching out with my tech toward Sullia, mixing my tech with hers. Dahn nudged me again, gathering my strength for me. The way I never could have done on my own. I slammed a wave of tech into Sullia and she howled, her hands leaving my throat and gripping her headpiece again.

  Well. It felt so good that I did it again. Sullia rolled away from me while I coughed my breath back. I could still feel Dahn inside of my head. And that felt good, too.

  Again. I’d asked it of him.

  And one more time, the two of us together, both of our powers combined, slammed our tech against Sullia’s. This time, she didn’t howl. She didn’t scratch at herself. She simply fell backwards. She was still and inert on the ground. The thinnest line of smoke curled up from the edge of the tech in her forehead.

  I walked through the streets of Europa that night. In my dreams. The streets were empty. Not even Dahn was there. But the bodies were there. The sky was the deep navy that it was on Io. I could hear a volcano erupting in the distance, the way it did every day on Io. Wait, was this Io or Europa? I couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. Because everyone was dead anyways.

  I saw the man with the boots lying in the street. But look! He wasn’t dead. He was rising up. He was smiling and laughing and asking me to come over to him. He wasn’t a stranger after all. He was Kupier.

  Kupier laughed and put his hands on my shoulders the way he always had. “DP-1, what did you do?” he asked me, and that was when he stopped laughing. “You killed them all.”

  “Not all of them,” I said, lifting my hands in the air. “I didn’t kill you.”

  “Yeah,” he smiled, so sad. “You did.”

  I woke up with a start, sitting straight up in my bunk. I jumped again when I realized there was someone sitting on the edge of my bed. My tech told me who it was immediately. Dahn Enceladus, the reading said. Heart rate elevated. Unarmed.

  “Dahn?” I whispered. “What is it?”

  She’s alright. He replied in my head. Sullia. They just released her from the infirmary.

  I tucked my knees up to my chin.

  Oh. I paused. I really didn’t want to ask what I was about to ask. We had to do that, right? We didn’t have a choice?

  Dahn turned and looked at me, and in the dark room, everything was as gray as his eyes. Do Datapoints ever have a choice?

  I shrugged. It was a good point. What’s going to happen to her?

  He paused, an uncharacteristically undecided look on his face. His shoulders fell an inch. She’s going to be confined for a while. For attacking another Datapoint. And for spreading treasonous rumors. But she’ll have to go back into interrogations first. That’s where she is right now, I think.

  I closed my eyes. Closed out everything but the feel of breath in my lungs. She’d had to go back to interrogations. God. I’d wanted to defend myself while she was attacking me. Hell, I’d wanted to do more than defend myself. But back to interrogations? I wouldn’t have wished that on my worst enemy.

  Hasn’t she already proven she can be trusted?

  Dahn shrugged. She’s a Datapoint who has recently been in Ferrymen custody who has attacked another Datapoint. It’s suspicious, Glade.

  You could say the exact same thing about me.

  You were defending yourself.

  I sighed and dropped my head.

  You won’t have to see her anymore. Even when she gets out. His voice was soft in my head.

  You mean they’ll keep her away from me?

  He nodded. You’re too important.

  I could feel his eyes on my face, but I didn’t have it in me to turn back to him. Glade. He started and then stopped. Is any of it true?

  I felt a tightness in my chest. You mean what Sullia said about me? You want to know if she was telling the truth about any of it?

  He nodded, but his back was to me. He was looking at the opposite wall.

  My loyalty is with the Authority. If that’s what you’re asking.

  He nodded again. And this time he rose. I could just see his bulky outline in the dark room. He spoke the next words out loud, half facing me, as if they were too brutal to be spoken in our heads.

  “Did you love one of them? Was she right about that part?”

  I stared up at Dahn, shocked that he would ask me. Shocked that he didn’t already know the answer. “Datapoints don’t love, Dahn. That’s why we get chosen to be Datapoints.”

  I think he looked down at me then, but it was so dark I couldn’t be sure. “Right,” he said. He took a step back and repeated, “Right.”

  The next morning, for the first time in my life, I was knocking on Haven’s office door. It felt like a lifetime had passed since I’d last been in there. And I’d never before come willingly.

  I entered when he called out, and I watched as surprise lanced over his face.

  “Glade Io, what a pleasant surprise. Although, perhaps it shouldn’t be so much of a surprise?”

  “I’m sorry?” I sat in that same blue armchair as before and he sat in his.

  He waved his hand. “Many Datapoints come to see me after their first Culling. Lots of questions come up. It’s not unusual.” His silver eyes followed the small movements of my hands and I stopped moving them. “I assume that’s why you’re here.”

  I nodded. Close enough. I was here for answers. “I’ve been syncing with the Authority Database. Like you told me to. I haven’t been fighting it.”

  “I’ve noticed.” He nodded. “And have you noticed how much easier the simulations have been for you?” He lifted a wry, smug eyebrow.

  I resisted the temptation to lift one back. Instead, I chose my words carefully. “They definitely move more smoothly. And faster.”

  “And you’re able to cull so many at once,” he supplied.

  I nodded.

  “Something is wrong?” he asked, his silver eyes watching me so closely that I almost fidgeted. But I didn’t.

  I nodded again. I took a deep breath before I took the plunge and asked, though. I’d been around and around with myself. This was the only way that I could get the information I needed. I had to bring it up. “The Culling felt different from the simulations.”

  “Naturally,” he said, crossing his legs and leaning his chin on one hand. “The same as the difference between a flight simulator and piloting a skip.”

  “Right,” I agreed, watching his face carefully. “But this didn’t feel like that. It almost felt like I was running a different program through my tech.” Here went nothing. “I’m just curious, is the Culling identification program that we run on the sims the same as the one we run for the actual Culling?”

  His eyes narrowed, just the tiniest smidgen, and nausea
crept up from my stomach. “Yes, of course. They’re exactly the same. I should know. I coded them myself.”

  The nausea doubled. I replayed that tiny narrowing of his eyes. He didn’t want me to ask about the programming as I had. He hadn’t liked it. And he’d admitted to writing the Culling program himself.

  I cleared my throat again. “Then why did they feel so different?”

  He turned away from me and, when he turned back, his eyes were narrowed again, but only for a moment.

  “Perhaps you should consider the fact that you aren’t a computer, Glade.”

  Ah. Yes. His answer for everything.

  “You think that I was the difference between the simulation and the Culling?”

  He nodded. “The programs felt different because you felt different. Datapoints are as close to emotionless as people come. But still, you must have felt something. Excitement? Ambition? Eagerness?”

  His guesses at my emotions made the nausea curl and twist in my stomach. I said nothing, and he continued on. “It’s hard to say. But there’s a reason we cull with people and not computers.”

  “Why?”

  “We cull with people, Datapoints, because it’s people who we’re Culling. We’re not pulling the plug on a set of desktops. We’re Culling people. Bad people, sure. But people. It’s not embarrassing that you should feel some of the weight of that.”

  His words shocked and stabbed at me. He was admitting that I might feel a certain way about Culling. That, in some ways, it was the forced taking of human life. His eyes seemed more metallic than ever before, and I wondered, for a second, if he could somehow read my tech right now, even if he didn’t have any himself.

  “I was hoping, since I’ve been doing so much better, I could have a look at the Authority Database.” I paused. “Like I asked before. I think it’ll help me with my next Culling. If I understand—”

  “Glade.” Disappointment was so clear in his voice that I found an apology on the tip of my tongue before I could swallow it down. “I tire of telling you no. Never have I and never will I allow a Datapoint to dig around in a Database that holds the fate of thousands of lives in its motherboard. Any tiny mistake you made could throw off its programming! There’s no chance I would risk innocent lives by letting you ‘have a look at it.’”