by J B Cantwell
We’ve had three more chip upgrades since my last note.
I’m just so tired.
I don’t know what they’re doing to us.
We have to find a way out.”
My heart was pounding. I tried to make sense of what he was saying. He sounded so terrible. So desperate. I tried to control my breathing, but the tears came pouring out regardless.
He had looked so … so sick.
And he had said we needed to leave. But how could he even think that? There was no way out for us. The chips in our heads would track our movements. We would just be brought right back here. Or maybe they’d send us to the Burn if they caught us trying to flee.
I reached up and touched the chip beside my ear. Just to test it, I pulled on one corner. My lens flickered and a shooting pain radiated through my skull. I gripped the sides of my head, reeling from the pain, but after a minute it eased.
Was it possible? Could we get these things out? Could we stand it?
Two kids on the run in the middle of nowhere. We wouldn’t stand a chance. We had no nature skills; we were city kids, and that was where we had learned to survive. Not out here where the ocean had pushed through the towns. And with no lenses, there would be no navigation. We would be lost.
I flushed the paper and wiped my face clean. When I got back to my bunk, I found Hannah sitting there.
“What did it say?” she whispered as I sat down beside her.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I held my breath, waiting for the urge to cry to pass. Then, when it finally did, I leaned in.
“He wants to escape,” I said as quietly as I could. I made sure to keep my lips as neutral as I could, as I was suddenly keenly aware of the fact that we were probably being recorded.
I gulped as I imagined a hidden camera in the bathroom stall, and I said a silent prayer that that space, at least, was still private.
Hannah leaned in. “That’s crazy,” she whispered.
“I know.” Tears were threatening again. “You should have seen him. You should have seen his eyes. And his hands. Hannah, he’s huge.”
She paused for a minute, thinking. Then she moved in closer, this time speaking directly into my ear.
“It happened last time, too,” she said. “We rarely saw them, but once in a while one would slip out, a door would accidentally be left open. It’s like they’re building a different military. A super-army.” She pulled back and stared into my eyes. “You know there’s no way out, right?”
I breathed out, my breath shaking.
Of course. I did know that. If I had only suspected it before, I understood now that it was true.
I waited for the lights to go out before I braved the bathroom again, one of Hannah’s slips of paper tucked into my pants. I locked the stall door and started writing.
“We can’t escape.
I’m so sorry. You look terrible. I don’t know what they’re doing to you or why. But you know we can’t get out, don’t you? They’ll find us and kill us or send us to the Burn. There’s no way to get our chips out without help, and by the time we’re able to find help they’ll have already found us.
The only choice we have is to try to survive. You remember the guys back in Brooklyn? The big guys who would come home each year to brag about their service? You’ll be one of those guys. Maybe not on the inside, but you will survive. Maybe it’ll work out in the end.
I’ll try to survive, too. But don’t try to leave. If anything happens to you I don’t know what I’ll do. Try to be strong, and so will I.”
I folded up the piece of paper and left the stall. I would keep it with me all the time until I saw him again.
Chapter Ten
But I didn’t see him again.
Weeks went by. We learned how to fire guns, how to put them together and take them apart. We sat at computers with jacked up video games that fired real weapons somewhere outside in the ruined world. We ran. And ran. We chanted what they told us to chant. We ate the slop they told us to eat.
And all the time I searched for Alex. Everywhere I went. Every thought I thought.
Where is he?
My last note was worn around the edges where I had folded it, always carrying it with me in case we might stumble across one another. Three weeks went by. Alliances were made. Designations were won and lost. Those who spent the most time in the Burn returned each day, their bodies slowly growing in mass just like Alex’s had, their heads pounding, and their willingness to speak sliding away.
I envied their size. It truly would have been easier to make it through all of the physical exercise and the danger of combat if we were all growing as strong as they were. But no one really wanted to risk a day in one of those beds, pumped with whatever it was that kept those recruits designated Burn growing. The horror on their faces told us that whatever strength they were gaining wasn’t worth the torture.
I stayed in the middle of the board, Hannah at the top. After a while, Josh was able to get himself up outside the Burn. Anna, however, seemed to go lower with every day that passed, despite her constant physical growth. Josh resumed regular training. He sat with us at meals, but the gesture was automatic, and no matter the conversation, he stayed quiet.
One boy, Blake Waters, was consistently at the top of the list. He was always on point, always ready for anything. I guessed that he was the kind of kid who always sat upright at the head of the class, ready to answer questions from the large viewscreens that ran the classes back home.
Back in Brooklyn, teachers in the traditional sense were a thing of the past. They had been replaced long ago by AI monitors that dominated each classroom. Just one person, the principal, ran the whole school, and he was really more of an IT guy than a teacher. The main job of a principal now was to keep the programs running. The rest of us were plugged in, at once downloading the information from the AI teacher and also trying to actually learn it as best we could.
Though it didn’t really seem to matter. It was unlikely that we would have a future use for geometry. For art. It seemed to me that few options lay before us once we were finished with school no matter how hard we studied. Only the elite, those with enough money to move on to college, seemed to care at all about the lessons the AI presented. And for the rest, we were there because there was nowhere else for us to go. The government needed a place to round up the kids, to keep us out of trouble, to keep us from running wild.
The only thing keeping kids going to class was the punishment if they were to skip it.
Blake had avoided that punishment. He had probably never skipped a day in his whole life. Some kids, smart ones, melted into the background, hampered by their knowledge, which was so superior to the rest of ours. They didn’t fit in. Even though all of us could call up into our lenses the information to answer just about any question imaginable, they understood it. There was a difference between walking around with an encyclopedia in your head and actually knowing what it all meant. Anyone with a lens could access more information than any single brain could ever handle. But even with all the technology in the world, the lens wasn’t what made those outcasts smart.
I stared at Blake one day as we waited for our turn on the obstacle course. He was lean and muscular, a bit shorter than some of the other boys. His dark skin was covered with a mist of sweat in the afternoon heat. He stood at attention, waiting for the call of the sergeant, completely focused. When the whistle blew, he was the first off the block. It was like watching someone solve an equation, the way he took on the course. Each move was planned, so much so that it looked like he must have practiced it while the rest of us were sleeping. He tore up that course with a ferocity that few others I had seen possessed. I liked it. Watching him was fascinating. But it also made me nervous. Maybe it was his confidence. Or maybe it was just me comparing myself to him and falling short.
Hannah stood in front of me, her turn next on our half of the course. The whistle blew. She turned back and gave me a wink, then to
ok off like a bolt, her tiny body slithering through each obstacle. She was so light she could climb like a spider up nearly anything they put in front of her. Then, before she was done, the whistle rang again.
It surprised me. I had been concentrating so hard on watching Blake and Hannah that I had forgotten my own place in line.
I sprinted off the block, my leg smarting from the extra strain that speed brought. I climbed through the netted rope, swung over the mud swamp, clambered up the wall. I felt like a giant compared to the other two I had just watched do this. I was a normal sized, average looking girl. But Blake was trained, clearly. And Hannah was so little that she could turn any obstacle course into nothing but entertainment for herself. I simply lumbered along in their wake.
By the time I made it to the other side I was drenched in a combination of sweat and mud.
“74.85,” called the sergeant. “Better pick it up, Taylor.” He scowled at me.
Pick it up? How?
I turned back, breath heaving, to watch the next round of recruits stumble down from the climbing wall.
And that was when I saw them.
A group of about twenty men, or were they boys? They marched in complete unison, and I was shocked when their sergeant brought them right past where we were training.
Sergeant Anderson Holmes
Designation: Silver
I looked through the small crowd. He must be in there somewhere. At once the troops stomped their feet and turned on their heels to face us.
“Attention!” called Holt.
Everybody froze, even those on the course, and turned to face the other recruits.
“Sergeant Holmes has been working with these young men for the same amount of time you all have been in my charge,” he said. “And look what he has made of them.”
He sauntered up to Sergeant Holmes.
“Though I might’ve done the same,” he went on. “If I had the same resources as some.”
Holmes bristled.
“We are each assigned to the task that needs completing,” he growled. Then he turned to face us. “Recruits!” he boomed. “Look at these fine men who have been molded and grown from our program. These are the soldiers who will have your backs when out in the field.”
He had to be in there somewhere. Somewhere in my brain I registered the size of the recruits. They were each at least a head higher than Sergeant Holmes, but they all stared blankly ahead, ready for action at the slightest suggestion.
There. He stood near the end of the first row. But as I took him in, horror creeped up my back.
He was huge.
They all were. They couldn’t have been that tall when they began training. And had they been so broad?
I inspected the hands of the boy closest to me; they were enormous. I felt sure that one of those hands around my arm could crack the bones inside with little effort.
And Alex. Alex was like the others, too.
I looked up at the boy again. His eyes were wide, bloodshot. I looked at the next boy and the next, and they were all the same. Nearly indistinguishable from their neighbors on either side.
“Yes.” Sergeant Holt was somewhere outside my awareness, still speaking. “Each of us is trained to do our job, whatever that job may be. And each of us must do it with pride and honor.”
With one motion, Sergeant Holmes turned the men back toward the base. Immediately their march began again.
I stood waiting, barely breathing now. Would he see me? My grip around the note in my pocket was wet from the tension. It would be insane. But could I get it to him?
No. There was no way.
A look, then. We would see each other at least. With so many witnesses around, it was the best we could hope for.
He was coming. Step. Step. Step. My eyes were glued to his face, my mind racing as I took in the changes he had undergone. He looked at once colossal and thinned, his cheekbones prominent beneath his skin. His muscles stretched his t-shirt as if they might break through it.
Here he was, right here, now.
And he walked right by.
My heart fell into my stomach.
He hadn’t seen me. How was that possible? My skin crawled as I thought about what they must be doing to him, to them, inside. I understood now his insistence that we escape, even though it would be the death of us. Whatever he was going through had been enough to make him willing to try to get out.
Now, more than ever, I realized just how late we were. Our last chance at escape had come weeks ago, well before we had even signed up for the Service. We should have planned together. Should have taken off while we still could, before we were bound to our commitments.
Now, all that would await us outside the gate would be a spray of bullets.
I let go of the note in my pocket and turned back to the course, lost. The world swirled around me as I tried to get myself together. Holt’s insults finally reaching my ears, and I was back at it, attacking the course with all the strength I had.
It was the only way.
Chapter Eleven
I spit the mud out of my mouth, but the grit of the dirt remained, crunching between my teeth. Blake lay beside me, his gun already trained on the enemy’s chest as he hit the ground, trying to cover himself behind a mound of earth. He had the recruit from the other team with two simple pops of his gun. In the distance, a shrill alarm sounded, signaling the other boy’s false death.
He moved ahead on his elbows, then, signaling, and the rest of us followed.
My heart thudded. Every day that passed in training it seemed I was less prepared than the one before.
Too much.
I hadn’t seen Alex once in the two weeks that had passed since that day on the course.
My overloaded brain spoke, telling me with increasing desperation that I must stop on this field right now, that I had to rest.
Too much, it cried.
Where was he? Was he thinking of me, too? Did he somehow choose not to look in my direction, maybe because he feared he would be caught?
My questions burned in my chest. So many questions and no answers. Only the vision of the burning plant, me standing before it, eyes ringed red, was enough to keep me moving. There were only the two options. War or poison.
We advanced on the stronghold. The lack of fire made my stomach knot. This was too easy. Blake halted our approach, making the motion for us to be be quiet.
Five of us remained from the team of ten we had started with that morning.
The two leaders on the viewscreen had been the ones to pick our teams the night before. Blake Waters with a score of 509, followed closely by Hannah, 503. Blake, the one with the highest score at the start, had chosen the next boy in line on the screen.
Leo Kapov
Designation: Infantry
I’d looked toward Hannah, expectant. By my heart broke in two as she chose the next down the list on the infantry, the person who was just below Leo in the rankings. Then Blake chose the next highest rank, and Hannah the one after that. They arrived at Lydia’s name, and it was Hannah’s turn. She chose her mechanically, almost as if she had become bored with the whole process. I felt sick as I watched Lydia saunter over to join Hannah’s team.
All the way down the line they chose until, eventually, they landed on me.
Blake was the one choosing next, and a moment later I found myself walking to his side of the room.
Hadn’t Hannah realized that I was the one she should have picked first? We were friends, on the same page, on the same team. We ate together, slept beside one another, counted on each other.
But not today. Today she chose the recruits who would best support her team, her goal.
And what is Hannah’s goal, anyway? I thought bitterly.
But I knew the answer, and it blew my anger out of me in an instant. It was the same answer, in the end, for all of us. Sure, we all hoped for money or fame or just relief from the weight we all felt to live in our world. But what everyone really wanted,
more than anything now, was to survive. We all needed to survive the most imminent threat, and what we did for the next three years would determine who lived or died.
I felt sure, though, that while choosing your team from a fabricated ranking system seemed like a good idea, once we were out in the field it would be a different story. Heroes were not made of rankings and games.
I kept my chin up and did not look over to the other team as we filed out of the room. We would meet with our leader to devise a strategy, and then each team would be released from a different point in the surrounding forests to make our move toward the other team’s treasure; a worn, ratty rag. One yellow, one blue.
All day our team had been picked off one by one by our opponents. We had left two soldiers back to guard our flag, but they were taken early in the game. We had rarely seen the enemy, but they seemed to find us easily, as if we were stomping through the forest instead of tiptoeing. Of course, we couldn’t do much about the noise we made. The drought in this region of the country had left the forest dead and dry, its twigs and branches fallen to the dusty earth. The recent rains gave relief, but the fallen bits of the trees still snapped beneath our combat boots.
But here we were, just steps from invading their camp, the only enemy in sight playing dead on the ground before us.
It was too easy.
Just as Blake was about to motion the others to follow him in, I put one hand on his arm.
“I don’t like this,” I whispered, peering through the trees.
We had only taken down three of their ten. Seven more awaited us. In the stronghold. In the woods. None of us knew where. Lydia was among them. I kept scratching the back of my neck, somehow certain that the thin laser beam on her gun was targeting me at every moment, keeping me alive just to extend my torturous place in this game.
“We’re almost there,” Blake hissed.
I could see the greed in his eyes. He seemed blinded by the possibility of causing such an early and easy defeat. The game was a simple one of capture the flag. Once the other team’s flag was in the hands of the first team, they won, regardless of the number of casualties on the winning team.
