by Megan Lynch
Please Add Your Review! And turn the page for UNDONE, book 3 in the Children of the Uprising!
UNDONE
Book 3
Chapter One
Jude Reeder walked into the cavernous room and drew an even breath. This is just a simulation, he reminded himself. Just do your best. Even though there were many people already here, the floor plan was so expansive that it almost didn’t feel crowded. Almost. He assessed the risks. The only way out was the way he’d come in, through two black sliding doors. There were no windows in the room, which would suggest that the meetings that normally took place here were private, even secretive, though that wasn’t quite the case today. Today, the room was packed with young people about Jude’s age, which was sixteen. In his training, they’d drilled into Jude to always be five minutes early—any earlier, and he’d be noticed. Any later was, of course, simply too late. Jude found a spot next to the doors and kept looking around, gathering bits of information he might need for later. He moved his eyes from person to person, sneaking glimpses at the faces of the sleek black watches that were wrapped around every wrist.
There were no guards around. They probably didn’t expect anyone like Jude to be in the room, only fresh-faced interns eager to please and easy to impress. This was a welcoming ceremony for a whole herd of them in the capital of the United States, after all. Only a fool—or someone who either had a lot to gain or nothing to lose—would try to sneak in.
When the simulation stage was over and he would finally be sent to the United States, he’d be the only one in a room like this who’d known hardship. However, since camouflage was the key to this entire mission, he’d have to pretend, just for a few months, that he was like the others. That he’d never been compelled to fight for his life. That he had two working hands made of flesh and blood and bone. Not a false one made of wires underneath flesh-colored rubber. In his mother country, where he’d been locked up for being an embarrassment to his government, where citizens voluntarily locked themselves up while consuming government narratives, where he’d miraculously escaped with his mind intact, if not his body, exactly—he would have had to pretend to belong.
None of the other new interns were talking to each other. Most were just looking down at their watches, waiting for the program to start. An empty podium stood on a low stage at the front of the room, and although a few adults were scattered throughout the room talking to each other, Jude hadn’t yet guessed who was in charge. He walked along the perimeter, closer to an older man who was talking to a young woman.
“Of course, it’s a difficult responsibility, governing the entire world. But every place has resources, and it takes surprisingly little to keep workers alive. We’re always working on efficiency. That’s why what you’re doing is so important.” The man’s silver hair glimmered in the fluorescents as he turned to Jude, perhaps surprised to find him listening. “And you? Are you an efficiency intern as well?”
Jude fought the urge to hunch over his watch and instead straightened his back and looked at the man’s eyes. “Yes.”
“Ready for your first day?”
Jude hoped the young woman next to him would respond, but she had already retreated into her wrist. Jude reminded himself of his training: respond casually—and there were concrete ways to be casual. He went with the mirroring technique, crossing his arms and leaning his weight on one leg. “Yes, absolutely.”
The man chuckled. “Yes, as you said—absolutely.” He uncrossed one of his arms and extended it. “Chuck Pennington.”
Jude shook it. “Pleasure to meet you, sir. I’m Dale Downs.”
Chuck Pennington looked down at Jude’s wrist. “Something the matter with your watch, Dale?”
Jude realized that the man would not let go of his hand. He looked down at his watch to find the face was displaying the “record” icon, threatening to reveal to Chuck Pennington that their conversation was being recorded. Instead of pulling his wrist away, Jude squinted at Chuck’s watch. “Yours too?” he asked.
Pennington’s eyes and opposite hand instantly shot to his watch to check, while Jude quickly tapped a finger on the screen of his own. “Must have been a reflection,” Jude said, but Pennington was already distracted.
“Yes… Good to meet you, Dale.” Pennington walked away, eyes on his own watch as he tapped out a little message.
Jude tried to let the interaction go as he took his seat. There was every chance in the world that Pennington had been tapping out a message to his wife, or his child, or a colleague about something that had nothing to do with Jude. They were seconds away from starting the program, but Jude would look suspicious if he simply waited. He opened a game similar to the games being played around him and tapped aimlessly. The game had been a clever design of the engineers back in the UK. It projected false pupils on Jude’s eyes to make it seem as if he was focused on his watch, leaving his real eyes free to roam the room. With his head bowed toward the screen, he followed Pennington with his eyes. Pennington tapped his watch once more, gave a nod to someone in the back of the room—Jude turned his head to cough so he could have a look, but didn’t see anyone—and took a seat next to the stage.
A young man not much older than Jude took the podium.
“Good morning,” he said.
The room rumbled as most of the crowd mumbled their reply.
“Congratulations again on being selected to intern for the worldwide efficiency program. I’m Kyle Belslinger, and I currently have the honor of leading my cohort. By this time next year, one of you will emerge as the leader of yours and will introduce the man responsible for leading all of us to the new recruits.” Kyle Belslinger went on for a while about what a great pleasure it was to serve, how much responsibility it was to measure efficiency, how satisfying it was to increase production for those who owned the means, and where the bathrooms were located. Finally, he said, “Please welcome Chuck Pennington, five-star general of the Metrics Worldwide Government and leader of our operation.”
The room exploded with applause. Each intern seemed to be trying to make their claps louder than the others. Jude followed suit, cupping his hands to amplify the sound.
“What an honor, what an honor!” Pennington grasped the podium with both hands and thrusted his ribcage over it, dwarfing it as he hovered, and seemed to smile and scowl at once. “Thank you for agreeing to serve in the efficiency program.”
Like any of them had a choice, Jude thought, and was silently thankful that he actually did.
“Efficiency is the heart of our society. If productivity is our collective mission in life, using the minimum amount of time and resources is not only a job, but a calling. You are embarking on one of the most important assignments in the entire worldwide system.”
Jude fought the urge to roll his eyes and wondered if anyone actually bought this.
“You are helping your fellow human beings by maximizing the quality of their life, which is to say their output. This particular group is so important because you will be the ones working on efficiency in the transportation system. What an exciting opportunity! You will be the ones to study commuter patterns, put yourself in the shoes of a typical Two or Three, and decide which routes to cut and which to expand. You will have responsibility beyond what you’d imagined for yourself, but you will learn to wield it according to Metrics values, for the good of all people.”
Heads nodded.
“As I look out at all of you and see your young, fresh faces, I can see—quite understandably—that some of you aren’t able to fathom the immense power you’ve been entrusted with. I’d like to close with a short anecdote to give you a glimpse.
“When I began my career at the Metrics Efficiency Program, Transportation Division, we were still struggling with the issue of pedestrian deaths. Today, pedestrian deaths have become so rare among registered people that it’s hard to imagine a time when they were so commonplace. But this was almost thirty years ago now, and it happened so frequently that even Twos would sometimes die
in vehicle deaths. When we moved away from individual cars and almost exclusively to trains, we were able to actually save lives with efficiency. The closer to the cities we got—where the higher tiers and their jobs were—the slower the trains could move and the fewer deaths we had. In order for the trains to move slowly enough to stop in emergencies near the cities, the faster we had to speed them up on the outskirts. The transportation department, under our leadership, had an enormous hand in creating the housing plan that accommodates all levels of citizens now. This way, Twos and Threes can live close to their workplaces, and Fours and Fives can get to work quickly without risking their own safety.”
A question hung in the air, unasked: And the Unregistered? One of the key policies of the Metrics Worldwide Government was the one-child policy. The second, third, or fourth child in a family was considered Unregistered and received no rights under the law. Prisoners, regardless of their tier, were also automatically classified as Unregistered upon incarceration, which meant that Jude had the unique experience of living as both a Two and an Unregistered. But the government wasn’t worldwide at all—though its citizens believed it was. Jude and his friends had discovered that Metrics was a semi-large country that had isolated itself and was now beginning to suffer for resources. The way they found to save resources for all their registered citizens was to murder all of the Unregistered and tell the public that they’d been relocated. Most people in this room probably believed that the Unregistered were still alive and well in a society of their own thousands of miles away from here.
Pennington cleared his throat. “The Unregistered were, up until the relocation, still living in zones where the trains were moving extremely fast in order to transport them to their jobs, if they had one. I was happy when the number of pedestrian deaths declined over the years, but any at all were difficult to accept. And the damage it did to trains was very expensive. I, myself, advocated for their relocation in order to prevent these deaths.”
Jude knew it was ridiculous that he was angry after everything that he’d learned, everything that he’d experienced, but he slowed his breathing, remembering the technique Daniel had taught him to control it. He focused on making his exhales longer than his inhales.
“So you see, you have an enormous responsibility in shaping the lives of people all over the world. Be vigilant, but don’t be afraid to make tough decisions for the greater good. One could say that it is because of our speeding up and slowing down program that many of you are here today. The time we’ve saved you in being on the train may have enabled you to study harder, and your parents to earn more to send you to the prestigious schools represented here. Now, do the same—do better, even—for another generation!”
The room thundered with applause, and most of the interns jumped to their feet in an attempt to begin a standing ovation. Jude tried to follow the example of the young leaders and rise, but a hand on his shoulder gently but firmly pressed him back down.
A woman’s lips were close to his ear, so close that he could feel her warm breath when she said, “Come with me.”
Jude fought the urge to run, fight, or mope, and slowly rose with her hand still on his shoulder. Now he could feel something sharp on his back as the woman led him into the aisle, past the raucous crowd, and back through the sliding black doors. She jabbed the sharp object harder into his back as he stepped through the doors.
Once he was out, he turned, quick and deliberate, grabbed the pointy thing, and looked into the woman’s face.
In his good hand, Jude clutched the pencil. Samara glanced down at her own hand, surprised, maybe, that it had been taken so quickly.
“That hurt!” Jude said, and Samara grabbed the pencil back and chuffed him softly.
“Why didn’t you check your watch for the icon? We were all waiting for you to do it, but you didn’t, and you let Pennington see it! What were you thinking?”
Jude looked down at his watch again and groaned. “It comes back on every few minutes, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. You wore one of these for eleven years. How do you not remember this?”
Jude looked at the faces around him. Denver and Stephen were behind Samara, waiting for him to answer. Daniel, still wearing the earpiece, the twin of Jude’s, in his own ear, stared at him. More strangers surrounded them, all members of the team that would eventually infiltrate the Metrics government in the attempt to liberate the USA, were staring at him, disappointed by his simple blunder. The United Nations was spending an ungodly amount of money on these training simulations, their eyes seemed to remind him, and he couldn’t go screwing it up every time. He needed to prove himself if he wanted to be a part of this team. You didn’t need to be perfect to save the world, but you sure as hell had to be competent.
Jude shook his head at the floor. “I’m sorry. Let’s go again.”
Samara smiled and gave Jude another little jab. “You were doing great before then. But this time, try not to meet Pennington at all. The fewer important people know who you are, the better.”
“Got it.”
Jude rubbed his back briefly where the pencil point had been stuck, checked his watch, and breathed deeply, his shoulders rising and falling.
The doors opened. He walked inside, where the crowd of young interns were, once again, waiting for their program to begin. He did the same thing as everyone else in the room—checked his watch.
Chapter Two
Bristol stepped into the natural light streaming from a floor-to-ceiling window and looked at a painting while a handful of others—including his agent, Cindy—looked at him. Beside Cindy was a woman who wrote for a magazine, though Bristol didn’t exactly know which one because the publication she’d handed him earlier didn’t have any words on the cover. A man stood beside her, the curator of the museum. All three watched him intently. He was supposed to be thinking about the painting, which was done by a famous modern artist, but all he could think of was what they were thinking of him. He struck what he hoped looked like a thoughtful pose in front of the frame, curling a hand at the stubble on his chin.
“Any initial thoughts, Mr. Ray?” one of them asked.
Bristol shook his head and kept his eyes on the painting, trying to concentrate.
Cindy clicked her tongue. “He needs to think. What he needs is quiet.”
Bristol squinted. His mother used to say, “Nothing good ever happens after midnight,” but he found that to be unequivocally untrue. He did his best work after midnight back when he was an Unregistered citizen, working until the restaurant closed at dark, then going home, grabbing paints and an ice pack to cool the heat-activated monitoring chip in his hand and going to his favorite haunts to paint the new images that had popped into his head during the day. Maybe, for most people, it was sound advice, reminding them to be home and asleep so they could wake up the next day and be productive. But Bristol was anything but normal.
In fact, for Bristol, the exact opposite seemed to be true. “Can I come back tonight?” he asked.
“Well…” the woman started. “You see, we go to print tonight, and our deadline is earlier this evening, and I have to have this finished by then, and—”
“Yes, okay, sorry,” he said, and scratched his face. “I think it’s great. I like the colors.”
The small group of people looked at him blankly. Cindy moved her head from Bristol to the painting. “The…colors?”
“Yes.”
“It’s…it’s just black and white.”
Bristol bit his lips together and pointed to a small stroke on the upper right quadrant. “Black and white everywhere except here.” He walked up to it and saw what he was actually seeing—the reflection, on a particularly thick stroke of black, where one of the bristles had come loose and was stuck in the paint. It must have caught the light in a strange way, visible only from where he’d been standing before. Now that he saw what it actually was, embarrassment rose up sharply in his throat.
But the others just marveled a
t the lone bristle hair. “What an eye!” said the curator, whose white hair hung in wisps to the side of his head.
Cindy nudged him. “Bristol also told me how excited he was to see the work of Xiao Lu, because he related to the hardship of creating in an extremist regime.”
“Is that right?” asked the woman from the magazine, turning to him.
Bristol nodded. He still wasn’t sure how to pronounce the artist’s name, and he didn’t want to embarrass himself again by attempting it. “He… We grew up in very different places, but we reacted the same way to being kicked around. I’d like to meet him.”
Except that wasn’t true. This artist was the real thing while Bristol was just an amateur. What would they have to talk about? But Bristol had to say something and hope that they all let him go home afterward so he could draw sketches no one would see but himself.
Cindy flipped her hair. “We had an extensive conversation about this. I have my notes. Maybe we can let Bristol go and I can tell you what we were talking about earlier?”
Bristol was happy to leave Cindy with the others. From the very beginning, she’d told him, “You just create, and let me do my thing.” Except it wasn’t quite as simple as that. The art world, he’d learned, was full of people who were willing—no, eager—to spend lots of money on pieces that did not require corresponding effort. Little things he’d make in an afternoon would sell a week later for thousands.
But the money was nice, especially after a lifetime of not having any. He’d bought a flat in Edinburgh, not far from the teahouse where he’d introduced his art to the UK. He lived there happily with his sister, Denver, and her husband, Stephen. Cindy tried, unsuccessfully, to convince him to move to London instead, but Bristol refused. There was still one person who he was working to persuade to move into his flat, but she would not leave Olympic Village, where the American refugees were still being housed.
