Vigilance is our hallmark. We are the eyes that survey the Collective. Always alert. Never blinking. Not by choice but by necessity: a single careless moment of inattention can bring down an empire.
(Elite Watcher Training Manual, 51st edition, page 41)
Morning arrives with the soft chiming of my alarm. Groggy and disoriented, I’m shocked at first when I don’t see Cam and Chu bantering in the walkway. Sif isn’t in the bunk over my head, either. As these facts sink in, my brief moment of pre-waking bliss melts away, replaced by a dull emptiness.
After a quick wash and comb through my untamable hair, I emerge back into the Watcher lounge. The tray I left on the table last night is gone, and the room looks pristine and clean.
Feeling a guilty thrill, I tiptoe over to Wil’s door. I lift my hand to knock, then think better of it and just put my ear closer to listen. No sounds of life come from inside, so I take a step back.
At that moment, my fitness tracker buzzes. I look down at the display and see a message from Akela: Timetable on infotab.
Suddenly reluctant to obey, I meander over to the fridge, grab a bottle of water, and take a swig. I do a lap or two of the living area, walking in a wide arc to avoid the scary surveillance room. Only when I’ve exercised so much my breath is coming in heavy gasps do I head back to my bunk to get the infotab.
The small white rectangle rests snugly in its charging shelf and feels cool in my hand as I lift it and give it a little squeeze. The screen whirls into life, and, as promised, a message from the Dorm Leader glows in the top corner. I sigh, tap the notification, and my mapped-out life floats into view.
0600 : Rise
0700 : Meal
0745 : Drill Practice
0900 : Watcher Training 1
1230 : Lunch
1330 : Watcher Training 2
1500 : Combat Practice
1600 : Elite Axioms
1630 : Drill Practice 2
1700 : Watcher Training 3
1900 : Dinner
1930 : Collective Broadcast
2000 : Watcher Training 4
“Never thought I’d be excited about drill practice,” I sigh, looking at my mostly lonely day. I give myself a little shake and then drop the infotab on the bed. It lies accusingly on the sheets, reminding me that I haven’t checked the secret Siren notifications yet. I turn away. Life is already complicated enough without some secret society to follow around.
I have loved you . . .
The crooning voice is almost too sweet to resist. But I squash it aside. I have to be downstairs. Can’t be spending my morning talking to some invisible being who keeps singing in my head.
The lift, sullen and silent as it glides down with a smooth hum. In my mind I go over the routines I’ve practiced with Akela. We rehearsed the answers I would give when asked about where I’ve been (training alone), why I’m not in Realignment (they appreciated Sif’s enthusiasm, but I’m no Hater), and why I’m now a Watcher (because Executive Lover Crucible).
When the doors slide open, a riot of butterflies flits around my stomach. It seems like an age since I was last here.
“A Watcher in Training is at the top level of the Elites. So act like you’re Supreme Lover, not some Love Squad lackey,” Wil had said back in the bunker. It was impossible to miss the way Hodge’s shoulders had stiffened at the insult.
Here in the atrium, people mostly ignore me. One or two Apprentices whisper to each other behind their hands. But they follow up the whispers with respectful nods, which leaves me feeling a strange mix of pride and shame. Pride, because I’m a Watcher. Shame . . . well . . .
Murderer. Mother-killer. Traitor . . .
The dining hall greets me in a thundering storm of conversation. I join the back of the queue and obediently take my daily morning rations.
“Don’t spill it,” a warm, deep voice speaks over my shoulder. Cam’s words have nearly the opposite effect, as I jolt my tray up in the air in surprise.
“Cam! What are you . . . ?” I splutter. “Hi!”
He smirks at me in amusement at the messy slop now oozing across my tray. “You still talking to us?”
“Of course! Not my fault they kept me in training for so long.”
“Come on, then.” He smiles and nods toward the seating area, inviting me to follow.
With a faint glimmer of pleasure, I do so, and we weave our way through the dining benches. The butterflies in my stomach go into overdrive as I spot a row of familiar faces. Chu’s back is to me, but he’s speaking to Lee and Pim with his hands gesticulating wildly. Near them, Farr and Dona are talking with Buff. The bulky twins Rook and Arah have their backs to me, too, but they look completely engrossed in eating. Only Sif and Zin are absent.
“Look who I found!” crows Cam as he reaches the table. All eyes turn toward him, then land on me. Chu’s face goes through a range of expressions before shutting down. Farr looks like she’s swallowed something unpleasant.
“Watcher girl!” Lee exclaims with glee. He is silenced with a sharp elbow to the ribs from Pim.
“Hi, Flick!” Pim smiles brightly. She pats the empty space beside her, inviting me to sit.
“Shove over.” Cam uses his hips to push Chu along the bench before sitting down.
“Hi, everyone.” I smile, feeling all sorts of awkward.
Pim gives me a shy look. “How have you been?”
“To be completely honest? I miss you guys.” I give a noncommittal shrug.
“Not possible. You’re living the high life, Watcher girl,” Lee says with a hint of envy.
“If by ‘high life’ you mean ‘hours in a dark room with nothing but vision screens for company,’ then, yeah, I guess you’re right.” I feel relieved that I had a prepared answer to give them.
“Wow,” Pim says dryly. “You’re really selling it.”
“What have you guys been up to, anyway?” I ask, diverting the conversation.
“Eeeeeeverything has changed,” he says. “We hardly get any time to slack around anymore.”
“Poor you,” Pim sniffs without a hint of sympathy.
I scoop up another spoonful of cereal. “Where were you guys sorted?”
“I thought you’d know that, being an all-seeing Watcher, and all.” Lee’s smile is jovial, but I catch a hint of suspicion in his expression.
“Ha. Ha.”
He shrugs. “Pim and I are officially Engine Roomers, along with Buff down there. Chu’s been put into the Coders with Cam—”
“What? I thought you wanted to be in the Love Squad?” I ask, surprised.
Cam gives a despondent shrug. “They didn’t want me.”
“Your brain was too big.” Lee smirks.
“Hey! I heard that!” exclaims Dona from further down the table.
“Oops. Don’t offend the beef,” Lee says in a loud whisper, before ducking further to avoid Dona’s death stare.
I look around. “What about the twins? Are they in the squad too?”
Cam lets out a bark of laughter. “You’ll never guess where they were Filtered.”
“Love Squad?” I say, confused by his demeanor. Seeing my blank expression, he rolls his eyes.
“Nope. Pleasure Tribe!” He laughs.
My mouth drops open slightly, shocked.
“That’s how they looked when the results came out.” Pim points her spoon in my direction.
Cam looks supremely satisfied by his dorm-mates’ misfortune. “Apparently their . . . ah . . . physique is good for the performance stream.”
“At least they’ve got Farr for company,” Pim says.
“What about—?” I ask, then stop at the silencing head shake from Pim. She seems to know what I was going to say. Her eyes widen toward Chu, and I get the message.
Chu’s scowl deepens as he snaps his spoon down on his tray and pushes up from the table. “Gotta go do something.” He stalks off.
“Now you’ve done it.” Cam’s gaze follows Chu from the room.
“What?” I ask, flustered.
“We’ve had to put up with that for weeks.” Lee rolls his eyes up to the ceiling and gives a weary shake of his head. “He’s been a nightmare, ever since Sif—”
“Ah,” I say, suddenly understanding. “He’s still not over it?”
“She makes sure he never will be,” Pim says, her lips barely moving. “I used to like her. But now . . .”
Cam leans toward me. “She’s playing with him,” he says, glancing from left to right. “Or at least, that’s how it seems. One minute she’s almost like the old Sif, then next minute she’s a block of ice.”
Lee grimaces as he scoops up another spoonful of cereal. “She gives me whiplash with her—”
“With her what?” finishes a cold voice behind me. Lee’s face freezes in a contorted mix of shock and embarrassment. I turn to see Sif with Zin beside her. When she sees me, Zin’s face clouds with fury and hatred. My stomach lurches.
“Go on,” Sif challenges. “What were you saying about me?” She folds her arms, and every hair stands up on the back of my neck.
Lee scrambles for an answer. “You . . . uh . . . you give me whiplash with your dazzling smile,” he finishes lamely, attempting a dazzling smile of his own.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that Sif doesn’t buy it. “You’re full of it. Less than five minutes with her, and you’re already betraying everyone.” Arms folded, she gives an angry jerk of her chin in my direction.
“Well this is awkward,” Cam mutters under his breath.
“What a disaster.” I clench and unclench my fists, leaning back against the cool concrete of the atrium wall. My face is hot, my heart racing. Frustrated, I kick my heel back against the wall, feeling a satisfying jar of pain.
Cam, who had been leaning against the wall beside me with his arms folded, jolts forward in surprise. “She went on at you for a long time. You okay?”
“She still thinks I’m a Hater, doesn’t she?”
“I don’t know about that . . .” Cam begins.
“How else would you take the phrase, ‘You’re the same old failure’ then?”
Cam lets out a nervous bark of laughter. “Oh, come on. As if she’d report you. You’re a freaking Watcher in Training, for Love’s sake.”
“So what? Telling her that Midgate visited me in the Filtering exam didn’t stop her from reporting me. She’s a machine.”
Cam bites his lip, lost in thought. “True.”
I turn toward him. “Has she really been like that the whole time?”
Cam sighs. “Not always. Sometimes it’s like she snaps out of it. She’ll joke around for a few minutes. One night she even started flirting with Chu again. You should have seen it.”
“How did he react?”
He leans back again, lost in the memory. “We were up in the lounge. Pim and Lee were arguing about their latest Engine Room sim. Chu and I were finishing up a Coding assignment when Sif rocked up. She squeezed herself between Chu and me and well . . .”
“What?”
“She did all of these weird things. Like she touched Chu’s knee. Complimented him on how good his haircut looked. Said she missed hanging out with him all the time now that she was in Love Squad training. Ruffled his hair.” Cam fidgets, not seeming to want to share these details. “It was like watching an Infotab Romance stream. His eyes went really big, and then he said a whole bunch of flirtatious things. You know how he is.”
I think back to the suave moves Chu used to make on Sif all the time. The times he leaned in toward her. The sweet words that made her smile. Then I remember the cold, hard way Sif responded to him when she first returned from Realignment.
“What happened?”
“She smiled and flirted back, and they got canoodling like old times. It was disgusting.” The look that splashes across Cam’s face is so comical I giggle.
“Hey, you didn’t have to sit next to it,” he protests, face stricken. “I didn’t know where to look.”
“Sorry. But I’m kinda glad she came back. Chu was a mess for ages.”
Cam harrumphs. “Don’t get too excited. The next morning she shut him down worse than she’s ever done. We were lucky that Chu didn’t end up in Realignment the way she was going off at him.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. Chu’s been a nightmare ever since. Barely speaks to any of us and watches Sif like he’s not sure whether she’s a Triumph gift or a hand grenade. Meanwhile, she flip-flops between the Sif you saw at breakfast and some confused lost person.”
“I had no idea.” For some weird reason, I feel like I should apologize. But the words won’t come.
Cam shrugs and gazes out the atrium windows. “You’ve been gone a while. Things happen.”
“I guess.”
In the distance, Sif and Zin march purposefully across the atrium floor, heading away from us with a group of other Apprentices toward the Love Squad wing. She looks the image of a Haters’ Pavilion guard, all solid muscle and precise marching movements.
“Machine is right,” I mutter, feeling an irrational flash of anger. “Poor Chu.”
“What?” Cam asks, turning his head sharply toward me.
“Nothing,” I reply. In the distance, another group of Love Squad Apprentices pass, heading for the drill field. Although their uniform is the standard Elite grey, they’ve already developed a soldier’s swagger in the way they walk. Almost as if they’re already carrying a firearm over their shoulders and a utility belt around their waists.
“So, is being a Watcher as hard as it sounds?” Cam interrupts the flow of my thoughts.
“You have no idea,” I reply. “What about you?”
“Being a Coder is fine. It may not be weapons training, but at least I get to make stuff happen. The Love Collective know best, don’t they?”
I ignore the hint of sarcasm at the end of his words and sigh. “With Coding, you get to create. I just watch things.”
“Creepy.”
“You wait. Everyone’s going to start avoiding me.”
He steps in front of me. “I won’t.”
“How can you be sure?”
When I look up at Cam, his face breaks out in that familiar, goofy grin. “We’re friends. Remember?”
His expression reminds me of the day we first met. The memory of Sif and Cam bouncing around the train playing “Catch the Hater” brings a sudden rush of grief and a lump to my throat.
“Things can change,” I say under my breath, fighting back the torrent of old memories that riot in the back of my head.