Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1)

by Lydia Chelsea

Marco shrugs. “Listen to them. Do they keep screaming and screaming?”

  Lyder motions silently to June. She shoots Julian a determined look, straightens her shoulders, and disappears behind one of the closest melds to the waiting area. A few minutes later her cries make Julian’s squinty little eyes go almost round in his fat cheeks. There’s nothing quick about her agony. Marco doesn’t offer any further encouragement.

  Wendy gives Julian a triumphant look. “On purpose,” is all she says.

  Krill punches Julian’s right arm hard. “There. Now you have something to distract you.”

  “You guys are mean,” I say, staring down at my unblemished left forearm and try to imagine having the same mirrored tattoo that everyone else has.

  When I look up again, Lyder meets my eye and gives a little nod, her hand pointing down the long hallway to the farthest meld before the exit. I give Julian a wink I don’t really mean. I generally hate the anticipation of scary things more than the actual things themselves. Julian strikes me as being that way, too.

  The room is too white. It reminds me of the death room at the Tribunal. I instantly tense up, though I don’t hesitate to ease onto the chair when a voice directs me to do so. Come what may, I’m ready to get it over with.

  It’s just me in the room. Judging by the machinery present, I wonder if the Idix will be applied by a robotic arm. This seems even more likely as a disembodied voice tells me to turn my left arm face up. Once I comply, slender metal cuffs snake around my arm just above and just below my elbow and at my wrist, locking them down. The cuffs are uncomfortably tight. I can hardly move my arm.

  A man enters the room. He’s whistling, cheerful, totally unconcerned by the fact that everyone who comes into this room screams bloody murder.

  He hands me an open tube of liquid. There’s no point in arguing, so I knock it back and hand him the empty vial. “Relax,” he says. “Everyone was just messing with you.”

  I blink at him as I realize I really can’t move my left arm now. The potion in the tube has paralyzed it. I wonder how knows to paralyze only my left arm. Maybe the metal in the cuffs has directed it there. He points at the viewer as a message pops up in front of me: If you scream as loudly as you can, you will be cleared from Assimilation for tomorrow.

  I’m just starting to laugh when it feels like he sets my arm on fire. I scream, loudly, and it isn’t pretend. It isn’t to earn a day off of Assimilation. It’s because the fire has spread everywhere inside me. It feels like flames might shoot out through my hair follicles, through the pores in my skin. A redness at the edges of my vision convinces me that the fire is real. I am the first person to spontaneously combust while receiving an Idix.

  “Congratulations,” the man says, his smile just as cheerful as the searing pain vanishes as quickly as it had come, “You’re function free tomorrow. See you bright and early the day after that.”

  He ducks out of the room. The metal cuffs pop open with a hissing sound. I glance at my still useless but now tattooed arm and burst into tears.

  Strega and Ritter, both having cleared function for the day, are waiting for me when I return to the keeping. Ritter is the first to see me.

  “It’s only day one!” he cries, grabbing my chin none too gently to check out my black eye, the result of Kate’s surprising left hook. My arm, with the fresh Idix, hurts more than my eye, but I don’t try to explain that to him. “Wait,” he says, noticing my arm for the first time. “Is that your Idix? Before you’ve even assimilated?”

  He exchanges a puzzled look with Strega.

  “Relax, Ritter,” I grumble, pushing past him into the living room. All I want is to flop down on the sofa and let my aching muscles sink in.

  But neither of them cares what I want. Strega leads me into the cleanse so he can have a better look at me, his large palm at the center of Ritter’s chest, shoving him out of the room when he tries to tag along. I’d still rather be left alone, but it is a small relief. At least Strega is not so easily riled.

  Strega I can handle. Maybe that’s because he’s not on the line like Ritter and me. There’s no consequence for him if I fail to assimilate. Well. Other than the fact that his brother would be disposed of, of course.

  “This isn’t the Assimilation process I’ve known,” Strega murmurs in between directions to look left, right, up, down.

  “So I’ve been told,” I answer. “What do you know about Assimilation, anyway? You were born here.”

  Strega’s mouth hitches upward at the corners. “I’ve run into quite a few assimilated persons in my time, though. And my cousin’s wife is from Ivardia, one of the open worlds.”

  “How long ago did she go through it?” I dutifully take the anti-inflammatory liquid the MedQuick doles out. He presses a weird adhesive cooling pad to my eye.

  “Six years ago,” he replies. He watches me finger the cooling pad for a moment. “When that falls off on its own, you can send it back through the MedQuick for recycling.”

  He turns his attention to my Idix, removing the loose bandage for a look, but he doesn’t touch it. “Hurts?”

  It does. Once in a while a muted version of the fiery pain licks along the silvery lines like a sizzling aftershock. It makes my arm twitch uncontrollably.

  “Yeah,” I admit.

  “I’ll set up another dose of painkiller for you to take before bed.”

  I nod as Strega leads the way out of the cleanse. Because they won’t leave me alone about it, I tell them about the reaction center and about the first round of hand-to-hand combat training that followed.

  I can see Ritter puzzling over it as we sit down in the living room, Strega and I on the sofa, Ritter in a side chair. “Assimilation is supposed to be about learning Concordia history, customs, and technology, not about fighting strategies.”

  “Are the launches still closed?” I ask. I have no idea how to reply to his expectations of Assimilation. This is all I know, not what came before.

  Ritter nods. It is another clue, a sinister one. What if Concordia is closing its borders for less benign reasons than maintenance and upgrades?

  “Strega,” Ritter says carefully, “I need you to do me a favor.”

  Strega looks at him evenly, but I feel a subtle shift beside me. He says nothing, just waits for the favor.

  “I want you to test Wilti Berg for the suicide gene mutations.”

  Wilti. The woman who stepped in front of the slide, ending herself.

  Strega looks sharply at me. “How do you know about her?”

  Ritter glances my way, puzzled by the accusing look Strega’s giving me. “Just because I wasn’t functioning before Tribunal doesn’t mean I didn’t keep up with the heralds.”

  Strega’s eyes flick to mine again, this time guiltily. It’s quickly replaced with exasperation, however, as he regards Ritter, whose theory about the suicides being murders doesn’t sit well with Strega.

  Strega sighs. “Ritter, we’ve been over this.”

  Strega rolls his eyes and folds his arms stubbornly across his chest. Ritter holds up a hand. “Hear me out.”

  Ritter retrieves the messenger bag with the tablet full of suicide research. I look up at him with some surprise. Strega is seeing these for the first time? I listen to the explanation again, and I watch Strega’s brows knit together as he impatiently glances over the data.

  Strega seems to consider his next words carefully, looking down at the screen. “Okay,” he admits, his voice still skeptical, “I can see you’ve found an intriguing commonality amongst the suicides, but—”

  “Strega, you—”

  Strega holds up his own hand now. “No, Ritter, I heard you out, so it’s your turn to listen.” Although he looks none too happy about the reprimand, Ritter sighs and watches Strega expectantly. “What you’ve got here is definitely a link. I can see very clearly what you see. But what you’re not seeing is there are other possible explanations for that link. This could be something environmental. It could be some sort of iss
ue with the living quarters assigned to low functioners. Perhaps something in the building materials is giving off fumes. Or perhaps ventilation issues have resulted in mold or other contaminants.”

  “Oh, come on, Strega!” Ritter shouts, rising. “What sort of chemicals in building materials make people want to kill themselves? And anyway, if it were environmental, why don’t all the suicides occur in their keepings? Wilti’s function level was two, Strega. Two.”

  Strega shakes his head. “Remember your story on the link between poor indoor air quality and health?”

  Ritter rolls his eyes. “Various allergies and respiratory illnesses, yes. Suicide? No. You’re reaching, Strega.”

  “Who would want to kill low functioners, Ritter?” Strega counters. “Why?”

  Ritter shrugs. “I don’t know. The Tribunal? They’re the ones that have to foot the bill for housing and food and luxury allotments.”

  “They provide those things for everyone, Ritter. Us, too. We cost them more than the low functioners. Why not murder the highest functioning first, then?”

  Ritter snorts. “C’mon. You’re the smart one in this family. You know why. Because you, Strega, especially you, provide value. Quality output. And it’s not like caretakers exist in the same numbers as cleaners and maintenance crews. But the function doesn’t matter. It’s the low function. The poor producers are targets, not the function types. Wouldn’t the low functioners be the obvious choice?”

  Strega doesn’t answer. Ritter takes that as a yes.

  “What’s the big deal, Strega? Why can’t you just test that woman’s blood to see whether she has the mutations?” When Strega doesn’t answer, Ritter asks quietly, “If not Wilti, why not test Davinney’s blood?”

  “Well, for one thing, all genetic testing on live subjects is supposed to be reported to the Tribunal. If I test her blood and don’t report the test as well as my findings, I could be in a lot of trouble.”

  “So, test Wilti’s.”

  “I can’t,” Strega says. “She was already cremated.”

  “What standard would it violate, testing Davinney’s blood?”

  “You know as well as I do that an intentional failure to provide required documentation to the Tribunal is a violation of the theft standard. Theft of records.”

  Ritter can’t argue with that. But he does. “Can’t you justify the test somehow?”

  Strega actually laughs, something I have seldom heard. None of us have had much reason to laugh. “How? What could I possibly need her genetic profile for?”

  Ritter’s mouth works as he searches for a plausible answer.

  “Nothing,” Strega says. “There is nothing to justify it. Certainly not while she’s assimilating.”

  “What about after?”

  Strega shakes his head. “Nothing I can think of.”

  “What about Linney?” I ask, looking from Ritter to Strega.

  Strega gives me a wounded look. I get the feeling he was hoping I’d be on his side about this.

  Ritter shakes his head glumly. “Since the Reformation, all bodies are cremated on Concordia. We don’t bury our ended.”

  When Strega leaves a few minutes later, he tries to placate Ritter. “Let me think about this for a little while, see if I can come up with any other way to verify whether the victims had the mutations.”

  Ritter nods curtly. “Thanks.”

  Strega pauses at the front meld. “Don’t dig around too much on this, Ritter. If it is as you say—though I’m not saying it is—it might not be a good idea. You never know who’s watching.”

  A chill races through me at his words, not only because of what they imply, but because I’m pretty sure Ritter has no intention whatsoever of leaving the subject alone.

  14

  MORE THAN FIVE hundred years ago, Concordia was very similar to Attero, as best as I can tell…riddled with illness, crime, wars, various injustices, and heavily polluted.

  Concordia’s leaders began to discuss potential remedies, but none could agree on the right steps to take to better the planet. Political tensions increased. Partitions bombed other partitions. Oddly, though they had nuclear technology, no one pulled that trigger. But the bombing and the fighting took their toll until most of the planet was nothing more than smoke and rubble.

  The pastkeepers are divided on what happened next, but after all the top leaders of Concordia were killed in explosions or gun battles, the second and third tier leaders took a good look around at the devastation and declared a cease fire. They sat in the rubble and painstakingly recorded for all posterity a document now called simply, “The Reformation”.

  They started with nothing and, over time, built the Concordia that exists today. A world with just three zones, labeled only 1, 2, and 3. Right before parallel travel was discovered, they formed a body of government consisting of one leader per zone, known as the local Tribunal.

  It seems pointless to learn these things, really, when most of my time in Assimilation is spent in physical training, combat, or the reaction center. We don’t need to know any of this history to know how to fight someone.

  Still, Assimilation becomes a streamlined routine of sorts: two hours at the onboard learning the history and customs of Concordia, four hours of various types of physical training, and two to three hours spent in the reaction center, each time with a new scenario.

  Lyder was right. Our group of ten quickly becomes a tight little family. We bicker with one another, we cheer, and we console each other, whether the pain is emotional or physical.

  Kate and I are particularly friendly. I don’t hold it against her that she was the one to blacken my eye that first day. If I held every bruise or cut against someone, I’d be forced to hate my entire group…and they me.

  “How many more days of this?” Kate asks, flopping down on her back on the grass in the onboard courtyard.

  Today we’re taking our classes at the end of the day instead of the beginning, which is unusual but is what I like best. On these days we can put the viciousness of the morning behind us and feel almost like we’re getting a treat in the afternoon. Like now, during the last break of the day. And this last break is made even sweeter because Lyder told us earlier that we will not meet for any Assimilation activities tomorrow due to some unforeseen facilitator meetings. Unfortunately, this will add a day to the end of the schedule, because Assimilation lasts for sixty active days, but I can’t be bothered to worry about that now. What matters is tomorrow, and tomorrow, I am free.

  Fifteen minutes goes by quickly, though, when you ache everywhere in your body. Anticipating Strega’s displeasure when I arrive at Ritter’s keeping with another day’s battle wounds keeps me from fully enjoying the sunny, mild afternoon.

  I stretch out beside her and yawn. “Thirty-eight.”

  “You’re kidding,” Kate groans. “It’s only been twenty-two days?”

  “Yep. But think of it this way…we’re almost half way through.” I sigh, absently rubbing my ribs where Randy kicked them earlier. My shoulder protests the movement. I try to remember what’s making it hurt.

  Right. Now I remember. I slipped in the reaction center. They closed the roof over it today and created a very rainy combat scenario, complete with obstacles to climb over, duck under, and wade across. About half way through I stopped to help June, who’d become tangled in netting coming down off a wall. If she’d dangled upside down any longer, her already twisted ankle might have broken. My boots got so muddy that I slipped crawling over the next wall and fell hard on my shoulder.

  “You awake?” Kate asks.

  I chuckle. Strange how I’ve been able to do that lately. We’ve all shown each other in subtle ways that this is not what we signed up for. Granted, some of us didn’t sign up at all, like me, but even those of us who came to Concordia willingly were not expecting Assimilation to be like this. But I have still been able to laugh, even if only sarcastically. It feels like a small rebellion. Maybe that’s why I keep finding reasons to.<
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  “Yeah. Just thinking,” I answer.

  Kate rolls to face me. Her eyes, those big dark eyes that everyone mistakes for naïve and innocent, are clouded. “Seriously, Davinney, I don’t know how much more I can take.”

  I sit up, ignoring the many little protests my body offers. She does, too. “Yeah, well, it’s not like we have a choice,” I say. She winces a little. Like me, she’s from a closed world. If she fails to assimilate, she’ll be disposed.

  She stares into the distance. “I’ve been doing some reading,” she says hesitantly. “Did you know there are people here on Concordia who’ve altered their Idixes so they can’t be tracked? There’s this whole underground movement of people called Erasers who do the altering in exchange for various luxury allotment items.”

  I search the courtyard for Lyder. She’s talking with two other facilitators. I don’t look at Kate. “We shouldn’t be talking about this,” I say, rising. When I do look back, her eyes are bright. Part of me wants to ask her what she means, what she’s talking about, but whatever it is sounds too good to be true.

  Kate jumps to her feet and grabs my wrist. “Look, I’m sorry. Please don’t tell anyone I mentioned it.” She shifts from foot to foot. I’ve seen her do that in the reaction center just before the “go” buzzer.

  “I won’t,” I tell her. “It’s a nice idea, but if I were you, I wouldn’t do any more reading about that stuff. Never know who’s watching,” I say, feeling a chill as I recognize Strega’s words to Ritter rolling off my tongue.

  Despite my warning to Kate, I use my Assimilation free day at a library. I’m sort of surprised they actually exist since almost everything on Concordia is computerized. But there are actual paper books, though they’re limited to reference volumes. Everything else exists in the form of either a chip you can insert into a logger (early post-Reformation stuff) or a time sensitive download. The computers in the library don’t require any sort of logon. Other than the meld keeping tabs on my entry, I don’t see any program utilities on the computer that indicate my usage is being tracked. Somehow, though, I don’t think the research I plan to do is something I should be doing on Ritter’s home computer.