Extraction

by Stephanie Diaz

  This is still a test. Sandy said to follow orders.

  “What should I do?” I try to steady my voice. It doesn’t work at all.

  “Do nothing,” Commander Charlie says, calm and collected.

  Adrenaline pumps through my veins. I’m angry and I will not stand here and do nothing. The second the acid reaches me, I’m done for. It’ll take me ten minutes to die. Ten minutes of heart palpitations and screaming and lungs constricting and my skin charring black.

  The acid will reach me soon.

  I turn my head around wildly. A rock would do the trick. I could bash my head in, quick and painless. At least more painless than acid corrosion.

  But there aren’t any rocks. I’m standing on a cliff, yet all the rocks are either too big or too small. I snatch a jagged one from the ground that’d leave a bloody scratch in my head, but that’s not good enough.

  With a snarl, I launch it into the air. It cascades in a high arc before dropping over the side of the cliff, careening toward the ocean.

  The ocean.

  I take a step and set my feet upon the cliff’s edge. Loose rocks slide beneath my feet. They tumble to the waves below. No doubt there are rocks down there too. Jumping into that water would feel like slamming into a brick wall, and the boulders would smash me to bits. But it’d be less painful than moonshine.

  My uneven heartbeat pounds through my ears, the last reminder of my mortality. My limbs still shake, and Logan, Logan, Logan is all I’m thinking. I shouldn’t have let Commander Charlie hurt him. I shouldn’t have done it.

  “Don’t jump,” Commander Charlie’s voice softens and echoes through the simulation. “Stay where you are.”

  I grab another rock from the ground and fling it into the sky, screaming. “You’re supposed to protect me!”

  “Trust me.”

  I drop to my knees and jam my face into my palms. Choking sounds bubble up from my throat. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.

  Please don’t let me die.

  I lift my head and stare at the sky, where moonshine rushes toward me in a cloud of pink mist. Tears fill my eyes.

  If I don’t follow his orders, Charlie will kill me even if I get out alive—

  But I’ll die in here—

  But it’s not real—

  But Cadet Waller said I will—

  A sob shakes out of my throat and I wrap my arms around my body, squeezing myself and closing my eyes. I breathe in and out again, trying to forget where I am and what I’ve done. Trying to ready myself for the sting of the moonshine and the horrible wrenching feeling I know is coming.

  It is the feeling of death.

  22

  “Great job, Clementine. You will make a fine citizen.”

  When I open my eyes, the midnight moon and moonshine are gone. I’m alone in the darkness of the dome.

  The door slides open to my left, letting a fierce stream of light in. Sandy moves through the door and then she is beside me, pulling me to my feet, into the warmth of her arms.

  “Sweetie, you did it.”

  “They … you mean…” I try to say the words, but they don’t get out.

  “Your Promise is eighty-two.”

  When I breathe, it’s so shaky it’s more like a sob.

  I’m safe. I’m not going to die.

  But my temple throbs, and I touch a hand to it. I still hear Logan’s scream in my head.

  “Please tell me he’s okay,” I whisper.

  Sandy’s brows furrow. “Who?”

  “My friend. Th-the one they made me use as a shield.”

  When she speaks, her words are careful and slow. “Clementine, no one in there was real. It was a simulation.”

  “But Cadet Waller said—”

  “I promise, it wasn’t real. They just wanted you to believe it was.”

  She gives my arm a light tug, and I make my feet move. Through a doorway, I enter a steam-clean capsule that dries the rainwater from my suit and body. Outside the capsule, Sandy guides me through another door into a back area of Recreation Division, and then into a hallway.

  “You … you mean it?” I say.

  “I promise,” she says again, and squeezes my arm tighter.

  I close my eyes and take a shuddering breath.

  Logan isn’t dead. I didn’t kill him.

  Beechy waits for me at the end of the corridor. He must’ve been in the crowd on the main deck. Sandy waves to him from a distance, but I go the rest of the way to him alone because she has to hurry back inside Phantom to guide the next Extraction. My heart still beats too fast in my chest, and I breathe deeply to try to slow it down.

  “Congratulations.” Beechy’s eyes are warm, deep, and golden brown. “They announced that you passed.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and run a palm over my arm.

  “Rough time in there?”

  I give him a tight nod and lean against the wall.

  “Come on.” He holds out his hand. A smile tugs at his mouth. “I want to show you something.”

  *

  In a corridor in Invention Division, Beechy presses his thumb into a lock-pad in the wall. A black door slides open, and we step onto a metal ramp.

  To my left and to my right, beyond the railing and far below, fog clouds a deck where lights flash on dark shapes I can’t make out.

  “What are they?” I ask.

  “Spaceships.”

  I touch the railing to peer over it better. That must be the flight port.

  “They’re not why I brought you.” Beechy tugs on my hand to pull me along. His palm is strong and warm in mine.

  Up the ramp, a flight pod sits shrouded in shadow, close to the ceiling. I frown and wonder what it’s doing here. Beechy uses his thumbprint again, and yellow bulbs light up one by one along the pod’s silver rim. The door slides open, revealing a comfy space with two pilot seats, a control panel, and a visor over a screen like a window.

  “This is our flight simulator,” Beechy says, leading me inside. “I’ve spent quite a lot of time here, what with the learning how to fly and then the teaching.”

  He settles into one of the seats and flips switches on the ceiling. The door slides shut behind me. I slip into the other seat and pull my legs onto the chair, scanning the dash with its levers and buttons and screens. “Why’d you bring me here?”

  Beechy looks at me and smiles. “For this.” He fiddles with something on a monitor, and the silver visor slides down, revealing starlight.

  My lips part. This is real starlight. Real yellows and purples and greens and blues through the moonshine shield. A billion stars in front of me, spreading vast to the farthest reaches of the universe, where maybe there’s someplace safer than here. Someplace better.

  Beechy fiddles with a knob, and the image slides to the left even though the pod isn’t moving. A sliver of the moon appears. A quarter moon, much of it in black shadow, but it’s still giant. It looks so real, so easy to reach if only this pod could really fly, that I can’t speak.

  It’s been mere days since I left. But now that I’m trapped a million miles underground, the sky means freedom.

  “It’s an image of the real sky.” Beechy’s voice is a soft breath. “What it looks like over the Surface tonight. We keep a running video feed for observation purposes and flight practice.”

  My heart flutters. This is Logan’s sky. I wonder if he’s up there seeing it now. If he pulled himself onto a roof, if he’s lying there watching clouds and stars drift by.

  I wonder if he’s forgotten me already, or if he thinks I’ve forgotten him. If he knows I killed a fake version of him tonight, even though I didn’t want to.

  An ache fills my lungs, burning my throat. I hug my knees to my chest.

  Beechy watches me out of the corner of his eye. “Which friend did you meet in Phantom?” he asks.

  I bite hard on my lip. So hard, I taste blood.

  “Someone I still have to save,” I whisper.

  “How long does
he have?”

  I play with my bootlaces. “Three years, if he’s lucky.”

  He taps something into a monitor. “Three years is a long time.”

  I shake my head. “Not long enough. And with the moon and everything … he might have less than that.”

  “You don’t think I know?” Beechy stares straight ahead at something I can’t see, or maybe at nothing. “Mantle is just as bad as the Surface.”

  I watch him, curious. I saw the main production facility for that sector on our way down here. I know Mantle is the place responsible for manufacturing weapons and other machinery. I know it lies underground, between Lower and Crust. I know children die there as often as they do anywhere, but I don’t know much more than that.

  “Could you tell me about it?” I ask, then hesitate. “I understand if you don’t want to.…”

  “It’s a smoke-filled cage,” Beechy says bitterly. “The factories take up so much of the sector, the work camp isn’t much of anything at all. It’s just two skinny rooms with compartments in the steel walls, sort of like bunk beds except they’re smaller and completely enclosed. Officials lock you inside at night. You’re stuck in a box all by yourself, and you can’t breathe. You can’t sleep. If you cry too loud, they open the box and make you run the furnaces all night instead. You’re always covered in soot and grease, and they never let you wash. They give you three cups of water per day and one bowl of this disgusting meal mixed with protein. Kids try to get their bodies caught in the machines to kill themselves. Half the time, it doesn’t work or someone catches them.”

  He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I doubt you wanted to hear all that.”

  “I don’t mind.” I fiddle with my hands in my lap. I’ve been so preoccupied by my troubles down here that I forgot how much worse it is up there.

  “You remind me so much of someone I knew when I was younger,” Beechy says. His eyes flicker with emotion, watching me.

  A strange tightness tugs at my chest. He said that before, the first time he saw me.

  “Really?”

  He nods. His voice quiets when he talks again: “I think I was seven, and she was maybe fourteen. She protected me for a little while, when things got bad. She was brave like you. And she had your hair.” He runs his fingers through his own hair, and sighs. “She became pregnant—maybe from one of the other kids, maybe from an official. I don’t know. She kept it hidden for a long time. I think she persuaded some people to keep it quiet … but I found her dead one night, shoved halfway inside a trash chute.”

  Sorrow flickers across his face. “Her baby was in the chute with her, already born, and still alive, but barely. There was an older boy with me when I found her, and he saved the baby. I think he snuck her into the sanitarium somehow.”

  I know what he’s thinking—that her baby was me. Babies are transferred from one outer sector to another sometimes, after all. Whenever they’re born, they’re taken to where they’re needed.

  I can’t breathe right, but I manage to swallow. “Beechy, that doesn’t … Just because you knew some girl who had hair like mine and she had a baby doesn’t mean the baby grew up to be me.”

  “I know,” he says. “That’s why I, uh…” He averts his gaze, and his cheeks flush red. “I checked your records. I have access to the citizen registrar system, and I found out your birth history and the names of your parents.”

  I stare at him. “You what?”

  “I know, I’m sorry. I should’ve asked for your permission. But I had to know if I was right.” His hand finds mine. “I’m sorry,” he says again.

  But it’s not that he did it without my permission. It’s not even that he found out the names of my parents.

  It’s that they have names. They’re real people. I’ve always known that, of course, but it never felt true until now.

  “And…” I swallow. “What did you find out?”

  Beechy waits a moment to answer. “I was right. Your mom gave birth to you in Mantle.”

  I nod. But my throat thickens as I remember Beechy’s story. I’ve never imagined my mother’s death before, but if I had, I wouldn’t have imagined one like that. I blink several times because my eyes start to water. It’s silly, really. She’s been dead for a long time. But I can’t help it.

  I swallow again, harder this time. “What was her name?” I ask.

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “I think so.”

  “It was Mae.”

  “Mae.” I try the word out on my tongue. I can’t tell if it feels right or not. I have no picture of her to match the name with. “What’s my father’s name?”

  “It wasn’t in your records,” Beechy says. “They could’ve done a DNA match to figure out who it was, but it looks like they didn’t. Or if they did, it’s in some other area of the records I don’t have access to.”

  A horrible thought rushes through me: What if my father is one of the officials in the Surface camp? Beechy said it could’ve been an official, if it wasn’t one of the boys in Mantle. And he might’ve been transferred to a different sector. He might even be here in the Core.

  “Listen, it doesn’t matter who your father is or was,” Beechy says, slipping his fingers into the spaces between mine. “Your mother was wonderful, I can assure you. And you are wonderful.”

  I laugh a little.

  “I mean it.” He reaches out and touches my cheek, and lifts my head so it’s no longer resting against my knee. I have no choice but to look at him. “You’re alive, and that’s all that matters,” he says. “I’m going to keep you safe for her. I promise.”

  I breathe in and out, focusing on the warmth of his hand against my skin. He’s right; there are things to be happy about. I’m alive and safe. Logan isn’t dead.

  But I think of him again, and of what happened inside Phantom, and I can’t stop my heart from tightening in my chest. The Logan I met during the test wasn’t real, but what if he had been?

  Would I have killed him to save myself?

  23

  The New Citizen Ceremony begins after breakfast the next morning.

  We stand in a gray room connected to the Pavilion where I shot an Unstable my first night here. I glimpse the viewing pods through a doorway at the back of the room, but Commander Charlie stands there, blocking it. Two Developers stand on either side of him. To their left and right, Colonel Parker and six other colonels are present. They wear full black armor and carry their helmets under their arms.

  The gray walls are mostly bare, but the Core flag covers half of one. My eyes go to the words in the silver circle between the blue and black stripes: INVENTION. PEACE. PROSPERITY.

  Oliver stands on my left, and Ariadne stands on my right. They both passed the test. Everyone passed.

  My palms sweat, even though I have nothing to be afraid of anymore. Because my work isn’t finished yet. I still have to gain an audience with Commander Charlie. I still have to convince him to save Logan.

  “Congratulations, new citizens,” he says as we stand before him. “We thank you for your hard work in training, and for your continued devotion to our cause. Please come forward.”

  We form a line and approach him. I try to keep my face normal. I watch him and the other Developers greet each person ahead of me, one at a time.

  Then it’s my turn.

  I shake hands with the first Developer, the only female. The skin is tight around her eyes. “Congratulations,” she says, touching my hand only lightly.

  I shake hands with the second Developer, the youngest, though he’s still much older than me. A dark-skinned male with a subtle trembling in his fingers. “Congratulations,” he says.

  I step past him, my heart thudding. Commander Charlie’s eyes look into mine, and his thin lips stretch into a wide smile. “Ah, here she is,” he says. “Ms. Clementine. Congratulations on your citizenship.”

  He offers a gloved hand. I take it, noticing he wears a small golden
lapel pin of a moon on his suit jacket. “Thank you, sir.” I manage to smile back.

  “I look forward to your career decision,” he says, and pulls his hand away.

  He’s already looking to the next Extraction, but I can’t help the relief that runs through me, untwisting the knots in my stomach. He knows who I am. He looks forward to my career choice.

  Maybe getting the chance to work with him won’t be so hard.

  *

  Cadet Waller says there’s one other part to the ceremony. She leads us to a room in Training Division with soft blue benches and a silver door at the back.

  “Have a seat,” she says. “We’ll call you through the door in the order in which you passed the test, starting with the last person and moving backward to the first.”

  She calls the first name.

  Ariadne slips her arm through mine and rests her head on my shoulder. Oliver sits to my right, twisting his hands in his lap. His glasses are a bit more cracked after last night, after whatever he did to survive in Phantom.

  “What if they do something to us?” he says. “Give us drugs, or something? I’m scared they’re going to mess everyone up again, like they did in the intelligence hubs.”

  “They’re not,” Ariadne says. “They didn’t do anything in the first place.”

  “You don’t even remember,” Oliver says.

  “Exactly. So it never happened.”

  “Because that’s the logical conclusion—”

  “Don’t.” I reach for Oliver’s hand. “Please don’t argue. We’re safe now, remember? We passed the test.” I tell him that, but I feel a bit queasy. We still don’t know why they gave us the hub gas, after all. Or even what it was.

  “I hope you’re right,” he says, pulling his hand away.

  He’s the next one called through the silver door.

  Ariadne is called soon after. She slips her arm out of mine. “See you soon,” she says with a smile.

  I smile back. “See you.”

  I was the first to pass the test, so I’m soon left waiting alone. I cross my legs on the bench, close my eyes, and listen to the room around me. There is silence, except for the low hum of the lights. No screams outside, no buzzing cam-bots, no pounding feet.