“Should we tell someone?”
“That guy—Sam—told us not to say anything!”
“Excuse me! Did you see what happened this morning?” Alicia huffed and slumped back against my headboard. When we made it back to the Dormitory building, it was as if nothing had happened. We signed back in as usual, rode the elevator back up to our floor as usual, and hadn’t left my room for hours. Nobody in the entire city seemed to know what kind of horrors were happening in the Wall district except for Alicia and me.
“Besides, who would we tell?” I asked, uninterested. Out my window I could see fading tendrils of smoke rising beyond the dark span of the far wall; if I weren’t looking for it, it would have seemed like nothing more than factory steam from the industrial sectors in Surgo territory.
“We could tell the Prefects,” Alicia offered lamely, staring blankly at the wall. “Or an Instructor. Or some Enforcers.”
“The Enforcers are the ones who set off the bomb!” I exclaimed a little too loudly, impatient. The two of us looked around cautiously; even in the confines of our personal space, you could never tell who might be watching and listening.
“Do you really believe that?” She asked me after another few moments’ heavy silence. I took a moment too really think about it before I answered.
“I don’t want to believe it,” I admitted, staring up at the ceiling. “It… it kind of makes sense though, right. That woman was talking about ‘rising up’ and all kinds of crazy Deviant stuff like that. What if the crowd went crazy? People could have gotten hurt.”
“People did get hurt,” she pointed out bluntly. “We almost got hurt. Badly.”
“Yeah, but more people could have been hurt if, say, there was a rebellion or something.”
“Rebellion?” Alicia sat up quick, facing me with a grave expression. “What if that’s what we saw? A rebellion?!”
“Keep it down!” I hissed. Somewhere, buried in the laws of Solstice, were rules forbidding acts, talk, and even the thought of rebellion. “Why would people want to rebel? Solstice is the safest place in the world!” Admittedly, I didn’t know much about the outside world, but all the books said that everything beyond the wall was a wasteland.
“Well… I could see it. I’d probably want to rebel if I were a Surgo; I’d hate having to live like they live,” Alicia said quietly. I just stared at her.
“Are you crazy? Surgos are criminals, they deserve to live like that!” I stated firmly.
“Yeah, barely!” Alicia shot back. “Remember that redheaded kid from our second year of school?”
“Yeah, what about him?” I could picture the kid perfectly, red curls bouncing around crazily whenever we had playtime outdoors; red hair was very uncommon in Solstice.
“He’s a Surgo now, I guarantee it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because, I read in a book somewhere that red hair is a genetic mutation,” she said, giving me a knowing look. “And we both know—“
“—That genetic mutations are only correctable through rehabilitation,” I finished with a grimace. “Just for having red hair? I’d rebel too.” The thought made my stomach churn. No one had a choice of what kind of hair they grew.
“What is she doing in our room?”
A shrill and altogether unwelcome voice sliced through our conversation with all the pleasantry of the loud electric saw that Surgo crews used to cut concrete. Pricella was a picture of perfection with her bouncy golden curls, perfectly ironed tunic, and typical pug-nosed scowl. Alicia rolled her eyes with the most displeased look she could muster, but didn’t budge from her perch on my bed. My dorm mate scoffed at her in the most pretentious manner possible, and proceeded straight to her closet to do who-knew-what with her clothing.
“Did I hear you two rule-breakers talking about rebellion?” She sniffed, turning just enough to peer suspiciously at me with one beady eye. She picked a tunic identical to the she wore and held it up to herself in her narrow mirror, as if to check the fit. I had to bite my tongue—literally—to keep myself from making a snide remark.
“Is eavesdropping a new hobby of yours?” Alicia asked sweetly. “How do you find time for that between snitching and tattle-telling?”
“I don’t need your back-talk!” Pricella snapped, glaring at us. “I’ll have you know that speaking of rebellion against the most sacred city of Solstice is a level three offense, punishable one month of rehabilitation!”
“Which is exactly why we weren’t talking about it,” Alicia replied, smiling with all her teeth and batting her eyelashes. “I’ll have you know that pestering us is punishable by getting thrown headlong down the elevator shaft!”
Pricella gasped, a picture of utter shock plastered on her goody-two-shoes face. “Was that a threat, 054330?”
People only used each other’s ID numbers as an ultimate sign of disrespect. I cringed, waiting for the worst.
“Why, no, it wasn’t, 027280; it was a FACT!” Alicia shouted, an angry flush creeping up into her cheeks. “Beat it, princess!”
“This is my room!” Pricella whined loudly, backing toward the door. “I am SO reporting you to the Prefects!”
“You do that! And while you’re at it, go hold your head underwater ‘til the bubbles stop!” With that, Alicia hurled the nearest thing she could grab—my pillow—at my infuriating dorm mate as hard as she could. Pricella screamed and exited in a hurry, perfect little footsteps heading straight for the Prefect’s quarters on the elevator deck. Alicia cursed and buried her face in her hands, far beyond angry.
“Isn’t it kind of ironic?” I thought out loud after a couple moments of quiet.
“What?” Alicia growled
“After all her effort to be perfect and rule-abiding, she hasn’t ever been picked to be a Prefect in five years.”
“That’s because they need someone with more brains than the building to do the job.”
Two sets of footsteps advanced up the hallway to our room; I quickly stooped over and tossed my pillow back on to my bed and Alicia sat up just as our two Prefects marched into the room looking none too happy.
098340, or Jonah, as we knew him, was well-built and tall for our age; most of the girls in our year began to sweat and experience elevated heartrates as soon as he entered a room. I had to admit, he was a pretty well-proportioned male. Alicia, of course seemed to be the only female in the entire school who wasn’t smitten by the very sight of him. Alicia was a tough nut to crack, boys-wise.
0443880, Abigail, was easily the nicest and most likable student I had ever met. Her warm, soothing voice, as well as her large brown eyes and ever-present smile, made her seem like the motherly figure all the girls—especially me—had been missing while at school. Abigail was always open for a quick chat or ready to help anyone with a personal problem. Even for someone with trust issues, I found it fairly easy to talk to her.
Abigail wasn’t smiling; not even close.
“Alicia, Natalie, what did you do to Pricella?” Jonah didn’t look very pleased at all. I wiped my hands on my pants, feeling them grow warm and damp with my nervousness; unlike Alicia, I wasn’t all that accustomed to getting in trouble.
“Nothing, Jonah.” Alicia sighed. “She was just getting on our nerves.”
“Nothing? Why is she crying hysterically all over my desk, then?” Abigail asked, giving Alicia a hard look. No wonder she looked angry; Pricella was so sour, she probably cried acid.
“She probably saw herself in the mirror.”
It came out before I could stop myself. I clapped a hand to my mouth and stared at the Prefects, wide eyed in horror. I was really going to get it now. Jonah stared at me for almost an eternity before, to my surprise, a small grin cracked his stern features.
“Sometimes I want to cry too,” Jonah joked, causing Abigail to stifle a snort and punch him lightly in the arm. Before we could help it, all four of us were laughing uncontrollably.
“Alright, alright, get a hold of yourselves,” Jonah said, clearing his throat and putting on his “Prefect Face” once again. “Unfortunately, we’ll have to put a warning on your name in the system Natalie, and next time you’ll be on cleaning duty for three days. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” I said as seriously as I could, even throwing up Solstice’s open-handed military salute for good measure.
“As for you,” he said, rounding on Alicia with a sigh, “you’ve had… let’s see… about a dozen warnings already. I’m going to have to put you on five-day cleaning duty, unfortunately.”
“Aww, come on,” Alicia said, making her best I’m-so-innocent face.
“No squirming out of it this time,” he said, shaking his head. “The Instructors will have my hide if they think I’m letting you guys off easy.”
“Great,” She sighed, flopping back on my bed. “Surgos in the Wall District are being bombed and I’m over here scrubbing floors for a week.”
The ensuing silence was so think you’d have had to wade through it to leave the room.
“What did you just say?” Abigail was staring at us with eyes so wide I was afraid they would roll straight out of her head. It was obvious Alicia couldn’t cover up for what she had said. Instead, with a sheepish look at me, she began to recount our ill-fated adventure to the Wall district. With every word my heart sank and I became more and more sure that we’d be spending the rest of our short lives in rehabilitation, and then as Deviants for as long as we could survive beyond the wall.
“…And then, after the Enforcers just offed the man in the street, Sam helped us get on a ferry back here to Plaza District,” Alicia finished, a very worrisome expression on her face. “Look, I know we weren’t supposed go into Wall District, especially after those enforcers told us not to, but we really didn’t mean to walk right into the middle of… whatever that was!”
“Hmm,” was all Jonah offered in response. Abigail looked back and forth between us with a mixture of awe, disbelief, and disgust. I couldn’t blame her; our story was ridiculous at best.
“Do you have any proof?” She asked finally asked. In response, I held up my hands, still scraped up pretty badly and rust with dried blood. I was afraid to wash them; everything that went down the drains was almost certainly processed by the Dormitory’s central computer. It wasn’t much, but it was something. It was actually pretty hard to hurt yourself in the Plaza District with one’s status being constantly monitored.
“So, you’re saying the Enforcers, the ones who are supposed to be protecting us from the Nightstalkers, just bombed a few hundred Surgos at some kind of rally this morning?” Jonah shook his head slowly. “That just doesn’t make any sense… why haven’t we heard about it yet?”
“Obviously they’re keeping it from people!” Alicia said, throwing her arms up in a frustrated gesture. “Come on, you think they tell us anything around here?”
“We…” I hesitated, unsure of what I was going to say next. “We think it was a rebel gathering, or something. Their leader spoke about ‘rising up’ and ‘fighting back’ and stuff like that.”
“Those are some very serious accusations, I hope you realize,” he replied gravely. “I hope you aren’t just making any of this up.”
“They aren’t”
All of us looked up at Abigail in surprise. She swallowed and looked at us nervously. “My father… he’s a Surgo. He lives in Wall District.”
Jonah, Alicia, and I looked at each other, shocked. For someone to admit one of their parents was a rehabilitated citizen was a bold move; for a Prefect to admit such a thing was unheard of.
“He and I write to each other a few times a month,” she admitted quietly. “He’s been hinting that something big has been approaching; the Surgos aren’t happy and a lot of them talk of change. I trust my dad’s word, too—honesty means everything to my family.”
“That’s unsettling,” Jonah said finally. “But it doesn’t prove anything.”
“I saw it happen from my window,” She added finally. “I saw the smoke, but it disappeared so quickly in the breeze. Now I know what happened, and I think they are telling the truth.”
“Have you told anyone else?” Jonah directed his question at all three of us girls. All of us shook our heads “no”.
“Sam told us not to tell anyone,” I blurted with a shrug.
“Who is this ‘Sam’ guy anyway?”
“He’s a Surgo, I guess,” Alicia cut in. “He saved us from the big man who thought we were spies. Everyone else listened to him when he talked, he was a leader of some kind.”
“And yet you didn’t find it suspicious that he told you not to tell anyone what you saw this morning?”
“No, not after he saved our lives.” I answered honestly.
“We were kind of busy with how suspicious it was that we saw Enforcers bomb hundreds of innocent people and then execute a man pleading for help,” Alicia added rather pointedly. Jonah looked at us for a long time before speaking again.
“Well, what do you think?” He asked finally. “Should I report all this to the Head Instructors?”
“No!” Both Alicia and I said in unison.
“At least not until we hear what they say on the ‘official’ city update program,” Alicia said. “If they don’t say anything, you should report it to whoever will listen; people need to know this happened today… and probably dozens of times before this!”
“Agreed,” Jonah said finally, rubbing his short hair thoughtfully. “Wow, it’s a lot to think about. It’s almost frightening.”
“It’s easier now that more people know,” I said, feeling a little weight taken off my chest. Alicia nodded in agreement.
Jonah rose out of his seat and motioned for Abigail to follow him. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to prepare for the celebration tonight,” he sighed. “Although, with this information, it feels like there won’t be too much to celebrate.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” Alicia said hopefully. As they were leaving, Jonah stopped in the doorway and turned back to her.
“Alicia?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for telling us. It took a lot of guts.”
I could have sworn I saw the faintest of pink rush into her cheeks.
“Yeah, no problem.”
As the Prefect’s footprints receded down the hallway I slumped down into my desk chair and buried my face in my hands. “I totally forgot about the Q-M tonight,” I groaned. “I don’t want to deal with all the patriotic nonsense they make us do now.”
Alicia murmured her agreement and rose to stretch. As she did so, her arm swung out and knocked over my desk lamp, sending it tumbling to the floor. It hit the carpet with enough force to shatter the light bulb and send glass spiraling in all directions; outside our door, someone passing by let out a surprised yelp and hurried away at a run.
“Oh, great, now we’ll be vacuuming glass out of the carpet,” I said, exasperated. “Watch where you’re throwing your arms, crazy!” When Alicia didn’t offer to help me clean, I looked up at her expectantly. Her face had gone from pleasantly flushed to deathly pale in just under a minute.
“We have bigger problems than glass,” she said shakily. “The person who just passed by was Pricella. I’m pretty sure she was eavesdropping on our entire conversation!”
I felt my blood run ice cold.
We were all at the mercy of a madman now, and I had no doubt that this madman wanted revenge.
“Should we run after her?” I jumped up, panic. Without a doubt, if Pricella had heard even a snippet of our conversation she would run off and tell the most important person she could find as soon as she got the opportunity.
“Run after her and do what? Tackle her to the ground and beg her not to say anything?” Alicia began pacing back and forth as she was apt to do when something was really bothering her. “What good would that do?”
“We could just deny everything,” I offered, trying not to get too worked up myself.
“That’s all we can do,” she said with resignation. “We’ll have to pretend we knew she was listening and that it was all a big joke.”
“We’re still going to get in a LOT of trouble,” I pointed out with a sigh. “We’ll be scrubbing floors and sorting supplies for a month, at least.”
“It’s better than being hunted down by Nightstalkers on the other side of the wall. Come on, we have to go warn Jonah and Abigail.”
We hurried down the whitewashed hallways to the elevator deck as fast as we could without running. Just as we arrived, however, the building PA system crackled to life, halting us in our tracks.
“All students report to the outdoor Atrium for a safety briefing. Repeat: all students must report to the outdoor Atrium for a safety briefing.”
The cool, genderless voice of the PA could not possibly have been more expressionless, but I sensed something very wrong with message. Alicia must have sensed it to, because we exchanged an uneasy look. Before we could question it, though, all the students that had been shut up in their dorm rooms began pouring out into the hallways and onto the elevator deck. The Dormitory building housed between two and three hundred students from floors four through seventeen, along with a floor’s worth of Educational Instructors on the third; though many of the older students were probably enjoying the nice day outside or visiting their families, a couple thousand students still needed to exit the building and pack themselves into the massive Atrium at the center of the educational campus. In no time at all Alicia and I were swept into the press of our peers making to take advantage of our seniority and use the seven elevators first.
“We need to get to the Prefect quarters!” Alicia said loudly into my ear, latching firmly onto my sleeve so we couldn’t be separated by the people jostling us. I nodded my agreement, but we had no hope of moving forward without figuring out how to get around the mass of bodies crammed into the relatively small space.
“Look, there!” I tried to point, I accidentally jabbed a shorter boy right in the nose. After apologizing profusely, I managed to point out our Prefects, who were engaged in what appeared to be an intense conversation with an Instructor that neither Alicia nor I recognized. Before we could get their attention, they were hurried off toward the back of the building, probably to the staff elevators on the maintenance deck, which would be far less crowded in the rush.
“You think they are already in trouble?” Alicia stiffened beside me as we watched them disappear around the corner.
“I don’t think so… Pricella only had a minute’s head-start. There’s no way she told anyone in that time.”
“She better not have,” was all her reply. We allowed ourselves to be hustled onto the next elevator with a dozen other students and rode all the way down in quiet amongst the other students, who were excitedly chatting about the surprise briefing.
“I bet it’s about the ceremony tonight,” some boy said loudly. “I heard there are Nightstalkers in the city and they’re going to try to attack during the Q-M celebration.”
“That’s stupid,” a girl I recognized from my geological studies class. “Every Enforcer in the city will be there.”
“That’s just what I heard,” the boy shrugged. The elevator doors opened and we all poured out into the overcrowded entrance area. It took nearly fifteen minutes just to get to the door so we could scan our wrists and leave the building. As I raised my wrist up to the door panel, I swore I saw the unsettling doorman give me a very suspicious glare. As soon as the panel beeped I quickly shoved my hands in my pockets to hide my scraped-up palms and followed Alicia out into the open air. Following the steady flow of students, the two of us circled all the way around to the back of the building and followed a wide cement path past several large classroom buildings, past the fountain with the ominous-looking statue, and down two flights of concrete stairs to the huge, grey stone amphitheater we called the Atrium.
“Students, please take your seats according to year,” an Educational Instructor was saying as we approached the arched entrance. When Alicia and I approached, she seemed to do a double-take, looking from us to her digital notepad and back up. She smiled thinly as we passed and directed us to the last two rows.
“Was it just me, or did it seem like she was waiting for us?” Alicia muttered out of the corner of her mouth as we began climbing the steps toward our assigned section. I murmured my agreement, but I couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling from her look, and from the doorman’s gaze as well. I turned back momentarily and sure enough, the Instructor hastily looked away from watching the two of us move away. Something definitely wasn’t right, and I had a bad feeling about why.
“Hey, we’ll be fine.” Alicia offered a small smile as we sat down on an unoccupied section of stone bench near the center of the second-to-last row.
“What if they know?”
“How could they?”
“Solstice knows everything.” It wasn’t uncommon to refer to the city itself like a person; a lurking, spying person to whom there were no secrets.
“So what, we aren’t allowed off school campus for a few weeks and we do a little extra cleaning.”
I rolled my eyes; only Alicia could find something positive about punishment.
“At least we’re still alive.”
My mind flashed back to the huge Surgo man pleading for help seconds before the Enforcers put a bullet through his brain. Something in the back of my mind doubted that being alive could be the greatest punishment of all if we fell into the hands of the4 Enforcers… or worse, the Rehabilitators.
“Students, please settle down!”
The deep, booming voice came from a tall, athletic-built man standing at the center of the Atrium’s stage, wearing a clean white tunic and holding the same kind of voice-magnifying device we has seen the silver-haired woman use that morning. The Director was in charge of every single thing that took place on or near the educational campus, as well as many things that had nothing to do with education; he came from a very powerful Apex family and had very good connections. The Atrium, now bursting at the seams with chattering students, fell silent in a matter of seconds.
“I’m sure many of you are wondering about this little impromptu gathering,” The Director began. Even from the thirty-third row back, I was dazzled by how white his teeth were when he smiled in his ultra-charismatic way. “Before we get to the reason for the security briefing, let’s talk a little about the history of the city.”
“Aren’t these meetings usually short and to the point?” Alicia whispered in my ear. I began to respond, but I was distracted by the arrival of a half dozen Enforcers at the main entrance. After consulting the Instructor at the bottom of the stairs, they split into two groups, three making their way to the walkway in front of the stairs and three beginning to move slowly up the stairs, scanning the crowd as if they were looking for someone.
“As I’m sure you all remember from class, only a quarter of a millennia ago, the world was in a very bad place; humanity was recovering from a century of war, starvation, and disease. Civilization as we know it today was non-existent: people were ruled by fear, greed, and controlled only by their desires. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the founders of our great city began to build upon the ashes of what once was a great but violent world. They understood humanity as the violent, uncontrollable thing that it was. So they created Solstice, a safe haven where the darkest parts of humanity had no part.” The director paused, allowing his words to sink in. The Enforcers on the stairs had made it almost halfway up, and it was very clear that they were looking for something… or someone.
The Director plowed on, “the founders of our city knew that the only way that they could ensure everyone’s safety was to offer an ultimatum: follow the established laws, or be turned away from all that Solstice had and still has to offer. Laws that are in place to protect you, and me, and everyone on this side of the wall. Rules that, if not followed, can do us unimaginable harm. It is the following of those rules, students, that is the subject of our meeting here today.”
The Enforcers had reached our row and were now roughly jostling students aside. Alicia stood up and grabbed my arm. It was no coincidence now. There was no mistake; the Enforcers knew. Solstice knew. There was no escape from our misadventure this morning. I felt bile rise in my throat and felt, for a moment, like I was going to be sick all over the students in front of us.
“Do not move!” The first Enforcer in the group held up his hand and shook put his other hand on his belt, resting his hand on electric baton. I instinctively froze; Alicia tugged at my sleeve, trying to move me in the opposite direction.
“Stop!” I yelled at her, losing it. “There’s nowhere to go! We were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there’s no punishment for that!” I could feel my face heat up in anger and embarrassment. I turned to the Enforcer, who was just a foot away now, and offered up my hands. “We’ll come peacefully.”
The Enforcer stopped, as if taken aback. Everyone in the entire school was looking at us now, thousands of eyes trained upon us like we were freaks. We were freaks; we had broken the rules.
“I’m sorry.”
“What?”
I could have sworn the Enforcer said it; several other people looked up, confused, so I knew they heard it too. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the blinding, searing, tearing pain of his electric baton as he, with a sort of practices grace, brushed it up against my arm. Every nerve in my body lit up like the city at night. Stars exploded in my eyes and my legs instantly lost purchase, sending me lurching into the students to my left. A moment later, Alicia screamed like a trapped animal and I knew she had met the same fate. Again in my mind the Surgo’s pleas for help, the finality of the gunshot echoing from one side of my skull to the other. Students were on their feet now, shouting and gasping, all pointing to the two troublemakers being dragged from the thirty-third row.
“This, students, is what happens when you try to resist what’s best for you and your fellow citizen. This is what happens when you trifle with groups that want to rebel!” The Director spat the word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. My eyes fluttered open and shut and I lost all sense of time. Before I could regain my bearings, my body was being dumped unceremoniously on the stage, vomit covering the front of my tunic. Humiliated, terrified, and defeated, I simply wanted to die in that moment. Alicia was dropped in front of me with a groan, barely conscious. I reached out for her, only to be zapped again. The world went black, then red, then black again. Someone, somewhere, was sobbing uncontrollably.
“Enforcers, take these disgusting deviants to the transport vehicle. Students: dismissed!”
I was being pulled again, further and further from the simple, safe life I had known until that unfortunate mishap. I brought my hand up to my cheek and realized that the sobbing was coming from my own lips.
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