Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1)

by Lydia Chelsea

  Lyder’s face fills the screen. She blinks twice, swallows, and begins refilling the gaps in her team, her voice as cool and flat as ever.

  There’s no chance to say goodbye to my old team after the second lowest ranked leader discards and options. The lowest ranked leader is not afforded any options or discards, ending with only four candidates. There’s a buzzing, though, in the auditorium. It has not escaped anyone’s notice that Belgrade optioned me instead of Lyder’s third ranked candidate, Marco.

  Belgrade’s team, my new team, hasn’t missed this, either. I want to squirm under their curious, wary stares. I feel weak at the thought that I must now start all over again, or nearly so. I’ve fought with each of these people before. I’ve run a few drills with them. But it’s nothing like my own team. I don’t know all their strengths and weaknesses. I have little to exploit, for better or worse. I am the new girl, which I am well accustomed to but weary of. The only good thing is that I still have Krill and Yaryk. We were the top three up until I threw the last couple sessions in the reaction center.

  When we sit down in the onboard, the first thing Belgrade puts on the viewer is the rankings. Krill and Yaryk frown. They’ve dropped from first and second to third and fourth. I’m surprised to find I’m fifth instead of sixth, which puts me in the last slot of the top half. There’s hope.

  If I thought Lyder was cold, Belgrade is completely frozen. If he’s ever smiled in his life, it was a very long time ago. He runs his team with a military precision that reminds me of my dad, and I am hit with a wave of homesickness so intense that I lose my blank face for a few moments. Luckily, no one sees. But that is where any resemblance to my dad ends. My father is all business when he’s working, but he lets his soft side show once in a while at home. Belgrade has no soft side.

  While the team onboards, he pulls Krill, Yaryk and I aside one by one. Neither of them give anything away as they return to their seats and scramble to catch up to the others. No one has to call my name to tell me I’m next. I rise, meeting Belgrade at the back of the onboard. I follow him to his quarters in the Reaction Center’s maze of hallways.

  I wait to sit down until he tells me to, figuring waiting for permission is the safest option. I thought Lyder’s wordless stare was intimidating. Belgrade’s has me ready to whimper and drop face down on the floor.

  “You’re wondering why I chose you over Marco,” he says matter-of-factly. “It’s because you think faster than he does. You make better decisions. But before you let that go to your head, don’t. I know who Kate was talking to in the library, and I can replace the missing parts of that soundtrack. So you’d better be the winner I think you are. You’d better factor well, and you’d better do everything in your power to boost the lower ranking members of our team so their factors remain above those of the upper half of Lyder’s team. Because if you don’t, if I slip in the ranks, the factors I report on you to the Tribunal won’t be favorable.”

  I wait for more. I don’t blink. I don’t even breathe.

  “Return to onboarding,” he says.

  I rise so quickly that the shift in air current makes the framed pictures on his desk wobble.

  So that’s it. Belgrade took me over Marco because he can control me. My nightshade carrot has become my factors. If I catch that carrot, I assimilate successfully. If I don’t, Disposal.

  I grab my logger and rush to catch up to the rest of the team, glad I’d studied a little ahead on my Concordia history the night before.

  Being a member of Belgrade’s team is as brutal as any interaction I’d had with them on Lyder’s team. We are in onboarding for only two hours before he pits us against one another in combat.

  It’s clear to me why losing his top two candidates is worrisome for Belgrade. Krill, Yaryk, and I are not as good as his former third, fourth, and fifth ranked candidates. Melissa Fallsgrath and Paolo Donque are fierce fighters, and they drop Krill and Yaryk without much trouble. Melissa is first ranked, so Krill shrugs it off. Paolo is sixth, though, so Yaryk hangs his head in shame, beaten by a lower ranking candidate.

  “Keith! Brass!” Belgrade calls.

  Stacy Brass is Amazonian tall, frighteningly muscular for a woman, and ranked second on the team. She’s several inches taller than me and probably has thirty more pounds of pure muscle than I’ve got. It takes everything I have to maintain that stoic face that everyone envies so much when all I want to do is crouch down and beg her not to hurt me.

  She nods nonchalantly in my general direction. Why wouldn’t she? She’s the clear winner here. I’ve never been pitted against her before in any of our matches against Belgrade’s team. She grins at me, but not in a predatory way like I expect. It seems genuinely friendly, and right up until her fist snaps out and catches my jaw, I’m thinking she might go easy on me this first time.

  Even though it was my jaw and not my eye, I have to blink to clear my vision. I manage to evade her next two punches. Avoiding her is really my only hope. I can’t take much more of her fists.

  The only sounds in the combat area are our shoes whispering and squeaking on the cushioned mats under our feet. She risks a glance at the clock, and I catch her squarely in the nose. A weak point, I note, as it gushes forth with blood. She grins again, still open and friendly, and I wonder now if she’s just completely insane. She glances toward Belgrade to see if he’s going to stop us, given that she’s dripping on the mats. Feeling a little guilty, I thrust my foot into her stomach.

  The weight difference is so great between us that it has less effect on her than I’d hoped for. She barely curls around the spot. I wasn’t expecting her to recover so quickly. I don’t make it out of range in time. I feel her fist connect with my left temple, the one I’d hit on the launch plate.

  In that brief second as I fall, I wonder if her charming smile was hiding cold calculation after all.

  I am in motion. I can’t quite open my eyes. My temple throbs, sending vicious little darts of pain through my head.

  “They’ll be ready,” a woman says. “We’ve got 3,000 candidates in this class throughout our various proving grounds and those of Zones 2 and 3, and we’ve got 5,000 more coming when these candidates factor out.” Melva Brighton, the second ranked leader, is huffing a little as she carries my feet. I recognize her voice, gravely and deep for a woman. “Add that to the prior classes the Tribunal is planning to reactivate under threat of Disposal, and there should be more than enough force to stifle the rebel infiltration.”

  Belgrade carries my shoulders as if I were no heavier than his logger. “Any new intel on the location of the rebel base?”

  “Not yet. The last two leads were dead ends. Might even have been intentional decoys. We’re looking for traitors within the guardians now. The rebels have got to be getting ahold of dampers somehow.”

  Dampers? I wonder fuzzily. Rebel base? Infiltrators?

  There’s a buzzing sound I recognize as one of the secured melds that only facilitators can pass through.

  “Why did you option her?” Melva asks curiously, with no small measure of disdain. “Hardly seems like much of a fighter.”

  Belgrade actually laughs, but it’s without humor and sounds like more of a bark. “Don’t underestimate this one, Mel,” he says, his tone almost unrecognizably friendly. “I’ve seen her break Challenge records and outthink some of our highest ranked candidates. But she’s from Attero, so she’s also one to watch closely.”

  They stop. I nearly open my eyes before realizing it’s best I don’t let on I’m awake.

  Melva hmmms and then calls out, “One for Respite!” After a few long moments, there’s another buzzing and we begin moving again.

  Belgrade goes back to his cold, harsh self. “Took a punch to the temple, a prior injury site.”

  “Do you know her caretaker?” a much kinder sounding voice asks as I am lowered to a wonderfully soft surface.

  “Bocek, I believe,” Melva answers when Belgrade says nothing. “Strega Bocek.”

&n
bsp; “Shall I send her back to you when she clears Respite care?”

  “No. Release her for today,” Belgrade says. “She’ll be useless, anyway.” His voice begins to recede. He’s already washed his hands of me.

  I can hear the smirk in Melva’s voice. “Still so sure you optioned well?”

  “She’ll come around,” he says. “And if she doesn’t, she’ll be disposed of just like any other low factoring candidate from Attero.”

  I can tell they’re stuck waiting for someone in Respite to open the meld so they can exit. I guess there are some melds even facilitators can’t open.

  “Even if she factors high, what makes you think she or any other Atteroan can be trusted?”

  “Her breath chemistry will call her out as a traitor if she can’t,” Belgrade replies.

  Melva just hmmms again, and the buzzing that sounds takes any further conversation out of my range of hearing.

  I am left with the Respite caretaker. I wonder if she’s going to summon Strega. I hope not. Sometimes his concern is tiring.

  “You can open your eyes now,” the voice says. I freeze. “It’s okay. I won’t rat you out.” I stay frozen. Is this a trick? Will this woman play video of me back to myself and threaten me with it? Does she know I was listening to Belgrade and Melva? Does she see me as an Atteroan threat the way they do?

  I guess I wait too long to open my eyes.

  “Really, it’s okay,” she says softly, cupping my face in such a motherly way that my closed eyes burn with tears.

  I open them but look away from the direction of her voice. I hear the crinkling of plastic, and then a BAU comes into view.

  “Breathe, please,” she says, even though I am already doing it.

  She studies the projection, then proceeds to check my pupils with a light that makes my head hurt.

  “You’d think Concordia would have figured out a better way to do that,” I grumble, closing my eyes as soon as she’ll let me.

  There’s laughter in her voice. “Some things are perfectly effective, even if they’re unpleasant.”

  She disappears for a while. I hear her rustling, bustling somewhere in the distance. I drift until I hear her bustle back to the side of the rift.

  I glance over at her caretaker’s uniform. I guess nametags are perfectly effective, too. Sheila Rosen. I wonder if she’s from Attero. Not that it’s easy to tell by a name, really, but on the other hand, it’s a pretty good bet, even if I’m not sure, that Krill and Yaryk are not from Attero. Although really, Yaryk Svorda sounds vaguely Russian.

  “Well,” Sheila says after I follow her finger with my eyes, “Strega won’t be pleased to learn you have a mild concussion.”

  “Do you know him?” I ask as she guides me to sit up.

  She nods. “We did our function onboarding together. Nice guy. Very compassionate.”

  That’s Strega, all right.

  She starts attaching sensors to my legs and my back, my temples and the back of my neck, right on my clothing.

  “Is he coming here?” I ask as she has me walk across the room.

  “He wanted to,” she says, twirling her finger. It’s a multiversal symbol, and I dutifully turn and walk the other way. “He was very concerned, very dismayed to hear you were brought in. But he’s got several surgeries today.”

  She gestures to the rift. It’s so soft that I’m surprised it’s a rift and not a regular mattress. That’s one thing Attero does better, if you ask me. Beds. Blankets.

  I hear my own thoughts and my eyes well up again. Attero. They’re making me one of them, whether I want it or not. Concordia words are burning themselves into my brain. Soon I won’t be able to remember my own language.

  The keeping is quiet when I enter. Sheila kept me in Respite until only an hour remained in the regular day. Ritter is still functioning, oblivious to my early release. Strega, on the other hand, has logged me three times, starting even before Sheila released me with full clearance for the following day. She wasn’t happy about it, but she looked at me levelly and said,

  “I’d much rather have you out for a few days, but given what I know you overheard, I don’t think it’s in your best interest.”

  I nodded at her. “Thank you.”

  She frowned at me. “Be careful out there. Another hit like that could end you.”

  I hear those words echoing in my head now as I reread Strega’s logs.

  Please log me when you reach the keeping so I know you arrived safely.

  I am with wards until late this afternoon. Please keep any activity to a minimum but do not lie down. Try not to sleep. I’ll get to you as soon as I can.

  And just now, as I was logging my arrival in the keeping: I’ll be there as soon as I can. Ritter is on his way, as well. He may reach you first.

  I fight a smile, wondering exactly what Ritter is going to do when he gets here. What is there to do? As far as I know, there’s no cure for a concussion except time and rest, and I am unlikely to get much of either one.

  Predictably, when he arrives Ritter looks me over with a frown and gives me a squeeze on the shoulder. “Rough day, huh?”

  I nod and close my eyes, my head resting on the back of the sofa. “And when Strega gets here, it’ll get rougher still.”

  Ritter chuckles. “He means well. And he’s an excellent caretaker.” I don’t disagree, but Ritter hears what I don’t say, and he answers as though I’ve said it. “He’s thorough. It isn’t that he doesn’t trust anyone else’s opinion, he just needs to see for himself.”

  And so he does. He barely says hello to Ritter before ushering me into the cleanse. While that is nothing new, nor is the dismay on his face, his agitation is unusual.

  “Sheila is a good caretaker. We went through onboarding together,” he says, repeating her tests one by one. “Why would she clear you to go back tomorrow? You have a concussion!”

  I let him rant and ponder for a few minutes until he winds down. I nearly reach into the hip pockets of his caretaker’s uniform for the alpha inducers I know are there.

  When he reaches for his logger, it is my turn to become agitated.

  “No, Strega, don’t!” I say sharply, grabbing his wrist so that he can’t call up Belgrade’s codes. “If I don’t show up at Assimilation tomorrow and seriously improve my performance, Belgrade will call for my Disposal.”

  Strega’s fingers freeze, hovering over the logger for a few seconds before his hand slowly drops. I punch the meld release. Ritter needs to hear this, too.

  Ritter is in the office, working on something on the computer that he clearly doesn’t want us to see, for he quickly shuts the wall viewer down and turns to us with ridiculously false cheer.

  “So, you’re good as new?”

  I almost laugh at the phrase, at how jarring it is that so much of Concordia’s phrasing is identical to Attero’s…until it’s not. The likenesses are almost as chilling to me as the differences.

  I shrug and lock my eyes on Strega’s.

  “I took a hit at onboarding today from one of my new teammates. She’s tall, and she’s got about thirty pounds of pure muscle on me. And she can fight,” I sigh. “She caught me here,” I say, rubbing my left temple. Ritter’s eyes go flat and his jaw twitches. “I guess I lost consciousness for a few minutes. I woke up to Belgrade and another facilitator, Melva, carrying me to Respite.” I don’t have to explain. They already know who both of them are from stories I’ve told about Assimilation.

  When I finish relaying everything I heard about the sheer number of candidates and the discussion about rebel bases and infiltrators, neither of them misses the fact that this Assimilation class is ten times as large as we were told: three thousand instead of three hundred.

  “The rebel base must be in Zone 1,” Ritter says, reaching the same conclusion I did.

  I nod. “They’d want to keep it close to the Tribunal.” Looking from Strega to Ritter and back again, I ask, “What are dampers?”

  Both Ritter and Strega go
very still.

  “Dampers?” I ask again, looking at each of them in turn.

  “Old technology,” Strega says dismissively, with a wave of his hand.

  “They’re mesh sleeves,” Ritter says. “They slide over your forearm and they dampen the signals from your Idix. They’re illegal, for obvious reasons. If the rebels have them, they can move around with some level of anonymity.”

  “Like being erased?” I ask, intrigued. This never came up during any of my scape searches. It sounded far easier than erasure. Just slide a damper over your Idix and disappear.

  Strega nods. “Except instead of completely hiding your location, they just widen the radius.”

  “Concordia’s meld receivers and the receivers buried underground and hidden overhead can lock your exact location within a three foot radius. The dampers make it more like Attero’s GPS devices…you might be followed to, say, a shopping mall, but no one would know exactly which store.”

  “Even if the rebels wear dampers, why can’t Concordia pinpoint the rebel base, then? Being at one end of a building or another still puts you in that building,” I point out, causing Ritter to stop pacing for all of about a half a second. “Why would Belgrade say the last two leads were dead ends? I mean, if the rebel base was, I don’t know, the library, it wouldn’t be too difficult to pin down.”

  Ritter shakes his head. “Maybe they’ve found a way to improve upon the standard effects of the dampers.”

  I can see Ritter is itching to jump on the scape and investigate the possibilities. But Strega made him promise: no action that could result in Disposal until I clear Assimilation. By the looks of him, that promise is about to end him.

  My logger sounds. It’s Mina, teaming up with Melayne to get me to agree to visit with them over the weekend, since we couldn’t make it work last weekend when they asked. I look at their hopeful faces, each one taking up half of the logger screen.

  “It’ll have to be next weekend. I’ll get back to you after Assimilation tomorrow. That’s when next week’s schedule comes out,” I say, buying time. I actually already know the schedule for next weekend, but I want to talk to Ritter and Strega. Is it wise to hang around the mates of guardians right now? I worry that I might say something that proves I’m not assimilating properly, that I have no interest in becoming a citizen of Concordia.