Green Jack

by Alyxandra Harvey

  Chapter 8

  Jane

  Jane wished she could tell Kiri almost as desperately as she wanted to avoid her. She wasn’t used to having a secret that had the power to kill. She rubbed the back of her neck, the ache the only warning before her head filled with images: the same pink moon, the field of crocuses, blue eyes and green leaves. She gripped the edge of the parapet to stop her knees from buckling. She wiped blood from her nose, hoping none of the security cameras had caught her.

  Beneath her, the streets were clean, the horses were fat, and solar lanterns were strung through trees that were old enough to have seen the times before the Cataclysms. To stand guard on the parapet was a small price to pay, even when the rain turned to sleet or the sun turned the lawns crispy. Jane had her sleek crossbow and enough training to shoot someone in the eye, if she had to. The alarms hadn’t rung in the Enclave since before she was born. A shift on the parapet was mostly boredom and bad food. She pushed back at the omens simmering in her head.

  Hours later, Kiri waited for her outside the guard towers. She was dressed for the next shift. She handed Jane a mug. “I hate the Rains.”

  “How’d you get more hot chocolate rations?” Jane asked. “You drank all of yours in one sitting last week. I was there. It was impressive. And kind of gross.”

  Kiri shrugged. “I got more.”

  “Uh huh.”

  She grinned. “I stole them from Asher so it doesn’t count. It’s okay to steal from jackasses, everyone knows that.” She stiffened. “Damn it.” Jane followed her gaze to Asher, coming around the corner. “I hate it when we’re on the same shift.”

  Asher sneered at Jane in her uniform. “How they think you can protect anyone is beyond me.”

  Kiri drank her hot chocolate pointedly. “Bullies are boring, Asher. Get a hobby or something.”

  Jane’s stomach started to burn, as it always did when Asher was around. Kiri would have eviscerated him by now and read the omens in his entrails. She talked about it in great detail, and would no doubt bring it up in the next ten seconds. Sometimes Jane wished she was anyone but herself. Asher smiled slowly. “Should I tell her a little secret, Jane?”

  The burning coal in her belly tuned to a shard of jagged ice. The Directorate had handed Asher a new weapon. All he had to do was tell Kiri a single detail about the Program and she would disappear in the middle of the night. Her mother would offer a reward, she would post bulletins with Kiri’s photo, and none of it would make any difference whatsoever.

  Asher loomed over Jane, until she bowed her back to inch away. Fear turned her into a rabbit, frozen and quivering and hating herself. Blissfully unaware, Kiri lost the few ounces of patience she had. She bared her teeth. “Go away now, Asher. You’re pissing me off.”

  The last time Kiri had gotten into an argument with another student, they’d both walked away with stitches. Asher didn’t look particularly concerned. The fact that he was a foot taller probably had something to do with it. Seeing as most people were taller than Kiri, she didn’t look particularly concerned either.

  She dumped her hot chocolate on his head. He gave a shout that sounded more like a shriek. “Oops, better dry off.” Smiling sweetly, Kiri grabbed his wet, sugary collar and propelled him into the guard house changeroom. She wedged a chair under the doorknob, locking him inside. “I guess Asher will be late for his shift. He might even get a demerit for that kind of disrespectful behaviour.”

  Jane winced. “Maybe we should---.”

  Kiri eyed her hotly. “Don’t you even dare. I know where you got those bruises on your arm last week. He deserves worse than this. Now, I’m going to go stand in the rain and pretend I’m doing anything else anywhere else ever.”

  Jane was stopped at the gates by Protectorate soldiers. She hoped Kiri didn’t see them, she’d be relentless with her questions. “Jane Highgate.”

  “Yes,” she replied, even though it wasn’t a question.

  They motioned her onto a waiting bus that smelled like exhaust, and some kind of cleaner. There were seven students already on board. Jane sat next to Lee since she as the only person she knew. Lee looked serene but her hands were twisted together so tightly her knuckle bones strained against her skin.

  They picked up three more passengers before heading out of the Enclave. Jane glanced up through the windows but she couldn’t see Kiri on parapet duty. The sky was a hard shell of pink, the clouds lined in gold. It was sharp and angular, like a broken jug.

  The road behind them stretched out through the ruins of abandoned suburbs to the Badlands beyond. If you followed it long enough, it would take you the farms and the Spirit Forest where the Greencoats helped hide Green Jacks from the Directorate. The bus turned right, heading towards the City.

  The screen set into the back of the seat in front of her showed serious and concerned Directorate scientists and clerks, pink-cheeked children eating protein paste cupcakes; Ferals, Greencoats. The Greencoats always had the same tagline: Treason and Terrorism. And always the same message—protection in exchange for obedience. Order. The advertisements looped over and again as they passed through the gates and soldiers with rifles peered into the bus windows.

  There was only one street cleared for vehicles in the City and they followed it past rubble strewn sidewalks and burned out buildings. It took them closer to the Kill Zone than any of them had ever been. The Kill Zone circled the lake and in the very rare instance a person actually managed to break through, they were met with miles of landmines and traps. The only access to the freshwater lake was through a narrow bridge from the Directorate district. The fence was decorated with bonechimes, mostly made from the dead of the Lake Wars. Skulls leered at them, nailed to posts. One of them was recent enough that rotted flesh dangled from its cheekbone.

  The bus didn’t take them towards the cluster of skyscrapers and the old university buildings that made up the Directorate district, instead it took them into the Core. Jane’s palms began to sweat. No one ever went into the Core voluntarily. The bus pulled through three sets of gates and into a lot shadowed by barbed wire and soldiers standing at attention.

  The curved walls of a stone amphitheatre were not exactly what Jane expected. She rubbed the back of her neck, willing the shards of light not to pierce her brain. She silently repeated the Numina mantra to herself; I am the earth, I am the earth where the seeds of wisdom grow.

  A woman met them in the dusty archway, the sounds of construction throbbing behind her. The contrast of the woman’s relentlessly cheerful smile was unsettling. “Welcome,” she said. “My name is Grace, and I’ll be giving you the official tour. You must all be very excited as very few people have this opportunity.”

  Asher sauntered toward them, rain beading his hair. A man Jane took to be his father was beside him. He was tall, thin, and sharp; like an arrow. There was a full ring of leaves embroidered on his tunic sleeve, trailing up to his collar. Grace half-bowed with dazzled respect. Asher smirked at her obvious deference. The smirk turned deadly when he met Jane’s gaze. She’d pay for Kiri’s trick with the door before long.

  “Follow me, please,” Grace called out, still fussing with her hair. She led them down a dark hall to a set of stone steps. “You’ve been chosen to serve the Directorate and the entire City.” Her voice was somber but she was still smiling. Something about it made Jaen’s eye tattoo tighten uncomfortably.

  They descended past small cells dug into the stone, each with a bed and desk and plush woven rugs and metal bars. The next level down was a research facility of some sort. Bleach fumes stung Jane’s nostrils. Underneath the antiseptic, the smell of rot and green water lingered.

  Windows overlooked bays of equipment and scientific looking devices.

  “The labs alone aren’t enough, nor are the green prayers of the Woodwives. As always we must all work together.”

  Medical chairs were bolted to the wall, people strapped in the seats, their right arms locked to the armrest. One of the subjects c
ouldn’t have been more than eleven years old. He didn’t fight the restraints, or the needle sliding into his vein, only stared straight ahead.

  “A pity,” Grace said. “But everyone must do their part, even those who would go against the Directorate. This way, they get to prove that they are worth something, after all.” Jane couldn’t imagine what a little boy could have done to merit this kind of punishment. Grace’s smile returned, though it was softer. “But none of you need to worry about this room. We know you’ll be loyal.”

  Jane tensed so completely that something in her shoulder popped uncomfortably. Even Asher was quiet. A unit of soldiers waited for them in the muddy corridor that ringed the amphitheatre. Jane had the crazy urge to run. Her calves quivered. She had good stamina and she was relatively fast---but a bullet was always faster.

  When she heard the shout, she half thought her own legs had moved without her. Another girl, sixteen at most, knocked three soldiers into each other. She was leaping behind the protective cover of the bus when the bullet caught her. Blood sprayed from her shoulder as she hit the ground. She struggled to stand up but the soldiers descended. She kicked and spat and scratched at them until a solider backhanded her but even that wasn’t enough to stop her frenzy. She bit and screeched, right until Grace approached with a syringe, stabbing it into the back of her neck. Her eyes rolled back in her head mid-yell. She went terrifyingly limp.

  “Where are they…” one of the students cut himself off as they carted the girl away. Questions never had an answer that helped.

  “One warning,” Grace replied dispassionately. “The Program is everything. You cannot defeat what is necessary.”

  Jane’s legs, so keen to run just moments ago, were weak as boiled leaves. Grace took them into the amphitheatre, ringed with benches and arches held up by columns carved like Green Jacks. The lowest level was screened by black iron fencework painstakingly decorated with individually forged leaves. It would separate the spectators from those fighting in the sand, and from the strange glass-walled houses built on platforms all around the ring. It was beautiful in its own way.

  “Welcome to the Garden,” Grace said with palpable pride. The clouds thinned slightly, as if they knew presentation was everything. The small houses were identical; windows eating up the ground floor like television screens that allowed you to see what was happening inside. Jane thought of the episodes her sisters watched on their tablets; Ivy preferred scientific programs and Portia dramarealities about people visiting the Rings. Jane was secretly addicted to lurid stories about the Spirit Forest and the Greencoats.

  All of which were better than this.

  The houses’ second floors had much smaller windows, but they were bare and uncurtained. Each door was painted a different colour. Jane was more confused than ever.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” Grace asked. “There is no finer neighbourhood even in the Enclave! Nothing but the best here in the Garden. And now some of you will get to live here,” Grace continued. “Assuming there is a compatible mate available. We cannot have babies too weak to wear the mask. That would just be cruel.”

  “Babies?” someone echoed.

  “Of course. The program needs volunteers of all kinds. If you cannot be the blade, you can be the furrow. That’s what the Garden is all about.”

  A hundred thoughts collided in Jane’s brain, each worse than the last. The pain at the top of her spine was so sharp she stumbled. The Garden was a breeding program and a prison. Who would pair them together? Would they have a choice of mates? Which was worse, fighting in the amphitheatre or being a prisoner in a village built to grow Green Jack volunteers? How many would they be forced to have? And when had this even become a viable option? Green Jacks didn’t breed like regular people.

  “Jane, breathe,” Lee nudged her. “Your lips are turning blue.” Jane coughed, lightheaded. “We’re supposed to look around,” Lee continued. “Come on.”

  “This is ghoulish,” Jane croaked. “They want us to….”

  “I know. Just come on. They’re watching.”

  The houses were small and pretty, furnished right down to the nurseries. The elaborate fences were wound with razor wire and electricity. Guards stood every hundred feet even though the village was empty. Jane shivered, so cold suddenly that she moved like a creaky marionette.

  ‘This way,” Grace called out. “The geneticists must test your DNA to properly pair you and ensure your strong health.” A man waited at the gate. He smiled casually, as though they were all friends. He jabbed a lancet into Jane’s finger. Blood welled instantly, and was sucked into a narrow tube.

  Jane thought of the blood on the linoleum, of babies born in sterile white Directorate rooms, or right here in the bloodstained sand of the amphitheatre.

  “And this is supposed to be better?” she murmured, feeling nauseated.