Extraction

by Stephanie Diaz

  59.

  My heart pounds all sorts of crazy rhythms, in my chest and in my fingertips and everywhere else in my body. It said to pick a person, but I chose wrong. I saved the Surface girl from home. I’m supposed to forget home because it’s not home anymore. I’m supposed to show loyalty to the Core, to Commander Charlie.

  There’s a whir, and the helmet eases off my head. I shove it off the rest of the way with trembling hands, and unlatch the straps holding me down.

  I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t think clearly when my head’s like this.

  It hits me that my hub is see-through; I can see into the other hubs in this aisle, the ones with Oliver and Ariadne inside. And someone could’ve seen me. Please, please, no.

  The door slides open, and I hear voices out in the room. Cadet Waller and the science instructors are making their way down the aisles. Other Extractions are climbing out of their machines. They don’t look like their heads are on fire. They’re smiling; they look like their tests went fine.

  Their voices make my head throb even harder.

  “Intelligence Session complete,” another voice says, echoing across the deck. “Average Promise Score: eighty-seven.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I must have the lowest score. With an average like that, only one person could’ve gotten that low.

  “Clementine,” Oliver says.

  I open my eyes, breathing fast. He’s standing just outside, staring at me with a crooked smile and an odd look in his eyes.

  “Are you gonna come out?” he asks.

  I quickly wipe my eyes. “Yeah.” I push off my seat and grab the door frame to keep my legs from wobbling. Spots speckle my vision, and my face is so hot I’m sure I’m feverish. But I have to pretend I’m okay. I have to pretend everything was fine, that I didn’t mess up.

  Even though someone’s going to find out eventually, if Cadet Waller doesn’t know already.

  I swallow hard. “How’d you do?” I ask Oliver. He’s still standing there with that odd smile. Maybe it’s just because my head’s screwing up my sight, but his eyes seem hazier than usual. Like they’re looking right through me. Like they’re not seeing anything at all.

  “I did well,” Oliver says.

  He doesn’t stop smiling. My brows furrow—which makes my head hurt more. I clench my teeth to keep my eyes from watering.

  “Hello,” Ariadne says, appearing beside me. There’s a layer of film over her eyes, and her gaze is unseeing. Just like Oliver’s.

  “How did you do?” he asks her.

  “Very well,” she replies, and smiles. “My Promise is seventy-eight. What’s yours?”

  “Eighty-five.”

  85. 59. My breath is shaky.

  The two of them won’t stop smiling and staring at nothing.

  I open my mouth to ask, What’s wrong with you? A cough comes out instead, then another. I double over.

  The world spins. I lean on the hub so I won’t fall over, but I miss it somehow and land on my knees anyway—hard. Pain slices through my temples, and it takes everything in me not to cry out.

  I hear the tap of boots on the ground. Cadet Waller or one of the other instructors might be coming over. I try to compose myself; I try to get back up on my own but it’s difficult when I’m shaking.

  Ariadne and Oliver don’t help me. But Cadet Waller does.

  “What happened?” she asks, lifting me back up to my feet. Her eyes are slightly narrowed.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “I just slipped. Stupid shoes.”

  “Your hand’s bleeding.”

  I look down, and sure enough, it is. I must’ve cut it on the door frame of the hub, or maybe when I was inside trying to get my helmet off.

  Cadet Waller touches my forehead and frowns. “You feel warm. I think you should go see a doctor. You might be getting sick.”

  “Maybe,” I say, even though I don’t think that’s what this is. If anything, the gas inside the hub made me sick.

  But Cadet Waller must not know my score yet.

  “Here, Oliver, why don’t you take Clementine to the health ward,” she says, moving my hand and placing it in his.

  “Okay,” he says automatically, stepping forward like he’s a robot. I don’t like him like this. It makes no sense, but I can’t figure it out right now. I can’t handle it.

  “It’s all right,” I say, tugging my hand out of his grasp. “I know where it is; I can walk there myself.”

  “Are you sure?” Cadet Waller says, frowning again.

  I nod. “Really, I’m okay. I can walk. I just need to see a doctor, like you said.”

  Cadet Waller observes me for a moment, searching my face for something. The shape of her eyes reminds me vaguely of the birds of prey I used to see pictures of in my science class back on the Surface.

  I try to keep my muscles normal. I try to keep the pain out of my eyes.

  “Go on, then,” she says.

  I glance at Oliver and Ariadne again. They’re still standing in the exact same spot, still smiling. Like they’re waiting for instructions. What’s wrong with them? I want to snap them out of whatever trance they’re stuck in, but Cadet Waller is right here. And I’m supposed to pretend everything’s okay.

  So I turn and walk away. I clench my fists and suck oxygen into my lungs as best I can.

  I wait until I reach the hallway to let the tears fall uncontrollably.

  18

  In an empty elevator, I jab the button on the Core map for the health ward. The door slides shut, and the elevator speeds along to the left. I lean against the glass with my face in my hands, breathing too fast.

  There’s definitely something wrong with me.

  Maybe Cadet Waller is right—I just need to see a doctor, and she’ll give me medicine and my head will stop hurting and my body will return to its normal temperature. I’ll go back to normal.

  But that doesn’t explain Ariadne and Oliver. Their emotionless eyes; the way their smiles didn’t go away. The fog did something to them too, just something different.

  The elevator switches to a vertical track and zooms down. I drop to the floor and clutch my knees to my chest.

  Visiting a doctor won’t do anything to fix my Promise score. That’s the worst part. Cadet Waller said we have to have a score of eighty by our last training session, which is tomorrow. If I don’t reach that—and how will I reach that if the last session is anything like this?—I don’t know what they’ll do to me. I don’t want to think about it.

  The elevator slows to a stop.

  Ding.

  The doors slide open. I pull myself to my feet. The main lobby of the health ward is ahead, and there’s a receptionist helping someone at the counter.

  I don’t know if I want to be here anymore.

  “Can I help you?” the receptionist asks.

  She’s staring at me. She finished helping the other person, and I didn’t even notice.

  I clench my hands and step out of the elevator. I have to pretend this has nothing to do with my training session. I have to pretend this is just something I woke up with.

  “Sorry, I’m not feeling very well,” I say, touching a hand to my sweaty forehead. “I woke up with a fever this morning. Cadet Waller said you might be able to help.”

  “Oh, honey.” The receptionist beckons me over. “Yes, of course we can help. I’ll call a nurse. You can take a seat.”

  I slip into one of the empty chairs, avoiding the eyes of the female patient sitting in the one across from me.

  A nurse arrives barely a minute later. She slips a hand around my wrist and pulls me down the hallway. I think she’s saying something and scanning the tablet she’s holding, but I don’t really hear her. I can’t really tell where I’m going.

  Inside a small examination room, she tells me to sit on the patient table. I do, my fingers crinkling the paper sheet beneath me. The lights hurt my head. Her voice hurts my head.

  “Open up,” she
says. She sticks something small and thin into my mouth that tastes like metal. The word pops up from an old school lesson: thermometer.

  She pulls it out after thirty seconds and checks my temperature. “Hmm … 103.8 degrees. You’ve got a high one, dear. When did you start feeling poorly?”

  I swallow the remnants of the metallic taste. “This morning.”

  “Did you start feeling worse after your training session?”

  Yes. Yes, I did. I shake my head.

  “Well, I’ll make a note of this. We keep careful records of all patient illnesses, so we can do our best to prevent them in the future.” She drops the thermometer in a plastic tin and taps the keypad on her tablet.

  “Can you make it better?” I ask. My body won’t stop shaking. I’m shivering and it isn’t even cold; this room is a furnace.

  “Of course! We always can.” The nurse sets her tablet down and snaps on a fresh pair of gloves. She moves over by the sink and opens one of the drawers beneath it.

  I hope she’s not getting a syringe. Please, no more shots.

  She turns around and rips off the plastic covering of a small, square patch. I exhale in relief.

  “This is a cooling patch,” she says. “It should restore your body to its normal temperature in a few minutes.”

  She lifts the hair off the back of my neck and presses the patch against my skin. It feels like ice. It feels wonderful.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “If you start feeling worse, come back here right away.”

  I nod and slide off the table.

  “Good luck with your final training session!” She waves me out the door.

  The door zips shut behind me. I stand there for a moment, my stomach twisting again because she’s right, there’s still one more training session.

  But it’s going to be okay. Of course it is.

  I hurry down the corridor, stumbling a little. I touch the wall to steady myself.

  On the ceiling, sheets of black and silver metal form what look like fake windows. If I were a million miles away, those windows would open and I’d be able to see the stars. And Logan. He’d know what’s wrong with me, maybe. He’d make all of this better.

  But there is no real sky here, and there are no easy paths to the stars. Or to him.

  I tear my eyes away. I walk faster down the hallway.

  The throbbing in my head gradually dulls. When I blink, I don’t see as many dots.

  I touch a hand to my forehead and relief runs through me. I’m still shaking, but I don’t think I’m burning up anymore. I think the patch is working.

  I move into the lobby and immediately realize I went the wrong way.

  This isn’t the main lobby. A sign on the wall reads MATERNITY WARD. Straight ahead, the wall is made of glass. Through it is a waiting area with soft, mostly empty chairs. In the chairs, a couple females sit reading on tablets or twiddling their thumbs. They aren’t much older than me.

  I turn away from the waiting room, wringing my hands. I don’t know how I ended up here, of all places.

  But … part of me doesn’t want to leave right away. Part of me is curious to see what it’s like.

  Down the hallway to my left, glass lines another, longer stretch of wall. Behind the glass, nurses roam between rows of incubators with tiny bundles of blue inside. Drip bags stand among the incubators with clear and orange fluids connected to tiny tubes attached to the bundles of blue.

  A door opens at the back of the room, and a woman enters wearing a pale gown like the one I wore during my beautifying operation. Her hair is matted with sweat, and her eyes shift nervously. A nurse leads her to an incubator near where I stand, where the nurse reaches inside and removes the bundle of blue, then places it with care into the woman’s arms. The woman pushes the blue blanket back a little, and tiny hands with tiny fingers grasp the air.

  I press my sweaty palm to the glass, holding my breath. I’ve seen pictures of babies before, but never ones this small. Never in the arms of their mothers.

  Birth mothers in the outer sectors don’t get to hold their babies. They deliver them while under general anesthesia, and their children have already been taken away when they wake up. This way, the mothers don’t have time to get attached.

  “Clementine?”

  Beechy stands frozen at the end of the hallway, the door beside him half closed. I blink in surprise, then wince because it hurts my head.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” I say, swallowing. “I was … uh … wandering.”

  He smiles a little and shuts the door the rest of the way. “That’s a pretty lame excuse.” He sticks his hands in his pockets and walks over to me.

  “Well, what’s yours?” I ask.

  “That’s confidential.”

  “That’s worse than mine.”

  He pulls a hand out of his pocket and presses a finger against my lips, stunning me into silence. “Shh, this is a quiet area,” he says.

  “I don’t care.” I speak against his finger.

  “You should.” He pulls his hand away. His eyes trail from my forehead to my cheeks to the bruise on my upper lip.

  I turn away to look back at the bundles of blue through the glass. My stomach flutters. It might be nausea that the patch hasn’t relieved yet, but maybe it’s not. I think it’s because there’s space between me and Beechy, and a foolish part of me is afraid, or wants, to make it smaller.

  “How was your training session?” he asks.

  I press my lips together. Way to kill the mood, Beechy. “Fine.”

  “Fine?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I twist my hands, staring at our reflections in the glass. My heartbeat feels clunky against my ribs, and my head still throbs a little.

  I almost want to tell him what happened earlier. I messed up, Beechy. I messed up and now I might fail training, but I can’t fail because I don’t think Commander Charlie will give me another chance. I think he’ll kill me and get it over with.

  But I don’t know how Beechy would react.

  “Clem…” he says softly. His hand brushes mine.

  Something cracks inside me, making it hard to breathe. Logan is the only person who calls me that.

  “Beechy!” An unfamiliar voice makes me jump.

  The door at the end of the hall flies open, and a young woman with spiky black hair rushes into view. Her laughter peals through the air. “I was right! I was right!”

  Beechy breaks away from me. “Really?” I hear the smile in his voice.

  “Yes!” She squeals and runs to him, flinging her arms around him when she reaches him. She presses her lips against Beechy’s. He meets hers with as much enthusiasm.

  A sour taste fills my mouth, and I try to swallow it, but it doesn’t go away. I touch a hand to my forehead to steady myself.

  This doesn’t matter. This shouldn’t matter.

  They teeter in their embrace for several moments. When they pull apart, she casts her shining eyes to me. “Who’s this?”

  A metal stud gleams in her nose. I think she’s the female instructor who handed me my gun the first night I was here, when I had to shoot the Unstable in the glass cage. Her cheeks are full of color.

  “Sandy, this is Clementine,” Beechy says. He looks at me, then away. “Clementine, this is my wife, Sandy.”

  The words hit me like a knife to the throat.

  “Ah, this is Clementine.” Sandy’s smile widens, and she offers a hand. “Hi.”

  He’s married. He’ll grow old with her, because that’s what people do here.

  I force my lips to smile. “Hi.”

  “Sorry, she’s excited because we just found out we’re going to have a baby.” Beechy chuckles.

  “He’s wrong. I’m usually excited.” Sandy bumps him with her shoulder and squishes her nose a little. “But yes, today I’m more excited than usual.”

  Beside me, muff
led crying seeps through the glass. Frowning, the nurse snaps on gloves and fumbles with a syringe, while another hurries over carrying a small silver monitor.

  “Oh.” I pause. “Congratulations.” I think that’s what people say in situations like this, since pregnancy is a good thing here, not something people are forced into.

  “Aw, thanks.” Sandy squeezes my shoulder. “You’re a sweetie. And a brave one, from what Beechy’s told me.”

  Beechy trains his eyes on me.

  I look away, focusing on my breathing. No, I don’t care that he’s with someone. I don’t care that he told Sandy about me.

  But I want to run. I don’t want to be here with the two of them.

  Through the glass, a third nurse takes the bundle of blue away from its mother, while the first flicks the syringe and the second attaches tiny round strips of something like gauze to the child’s forehead. The mother holds her hands near her mouth, shaking her head fast.

  Sandy pulls away from Beechy to move closer to the glass.

  My forehead creases. Was the child born sickly? If it was, thank the stars it’s here in the Core. The doctors will be able to fix it.

  “What happened?” Beechy says to me, softly.

  “Hmm?”

  “What happened in training earlier?”

  The child’s cries grow louder and sound more like coughs. The first nurse eases the needle into its chest, and my stomach flips even though I’m not the one getting the shot. Sandy grips her arm with her hand.

  “Please tell me,” Beechy says.

  I shake my head. “I don’t know if I can trust you.”

  He’s been kind to me, yes, but finding out about Sandy makes me think he hasn’t told me other things that are important. And what am I supposed to say, anyway? I might fail training; Commander Charlie might kill me tomorrow. Can you help me?

  He takes a step back, looking hurt. “I saved you from Sam. You don’t think you can trust me?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you can.” He sets his jaw. “And you know why?”

  “No.” And I don’t know why he cares so much, either.

  “Because I was like you, but I had no one.” He puts his hand on my shoulder, and presses harder when I flinch. “Did you hear me? I was exactly like you.” His eyes cling to mine, like he’s trying to tell me something.