Builders for the Future

by Salena Casha

Salena Casha's work has appeared in over thirty publications. She was a finalist for the 2013-2014 Boston Public Library’s Children’s Writer-in-Residence. Her first three picture books were published by MeeGenius Books. One of them, titled Nuwa and the Great Wall, was featured in the 2014 PBS Summer Learning Project for kids and won honorable mention in the 2014 Hollywood Halloween Book Festival. When not writing, she can be found editing math books, carving pumpkins and travelling the world. Check out her website at www.salenacasha.com.

Seraphina’s little brother was the first to notice when things changed. Maybe it was because he spent most of his days by himself in his family’s house on Mars trying to outwit the babysitter bots assigned to him. Or maybe he was in fact a better observer than anyone ever gave him credit for—a strange byproduct of his “condition.”

So of course he was the one who first saw it during a snack break. The hologram floated in the traction tube and pinged under warped glass. It didn’t matter who the letter was for. He wanted to read it.

He poked at the fingerprint sensor. It glowed red.

Incorrect match.

He frowned and punched the button again.

Incorrect match.

Even though he was persistent for an eight-year-old, after fifteen minutes of pressing, squeezing, and sticking his hand into the tube itself, he gave up. Whatever the letter said, it wasn’t worth losing fingers for.

When Seraphina came home from school that day, about four hours after her brother found the letter, she saw it the moment she walked into their living pod. She knew the letter was supposed to arrive because Mark hadn’t been able to shut up about it during their year eleven science class.

How he’d gotten his letter.

How he already knew what the competition task would be.

How he was going to be the first person in a hundred years from their school to be selected as a Builder for the Future.

It wasn’t curiosity that Seraphina felt when she walked straight past the traction tube and up to her room. Yes, her hands itched to wind the message into playback, but she didn’t. Instead, she sat down at her work desk, popped out her building set and took apart the hovercraft miniature she’d skimmed together the previous night.

The sleek hull shone in the limited glo-light of her overhead. It wouldn’t be like those huge ones that bobbed along Mars’ streets. It could never hold a person or a full-sized animal.

Maybe a baby mouse. Someday. When it was good enough.

With the sleek pin of her skimmer, she split the hovercraft into the strangest shapes and bits that she could, carving it into a massive puzzle of cubes and circles that hadn’t existed before. One-handed, she grabbed her timer. For a moment, she closed her eyes and took a quick, quiet breath.

Her fingers found the clock and she punched start.

It took her five minutes and twenty-four seconds to rebuild the craft, slightly different than the last. A little thinner around the edges with sharper propellers. She’d done it about a minute slower than the night before, so she took apart the spacecraft, skimmed it into different pieces and began again.

Her fingers moved easily between the blocks. They were titanium, no tick marks or buttons to show where or how they fit together. Like a bike without training wheels. Her dad had used them at work to build structures, the kind that people lived in on Colony M. Once he built the miniature, he’d take it to the lab. They’d blow up the little pieces of matter until they were big enough to fit an entire person. The new building or craft or piece of equipment would then be assigned a place in Colony M. Easy to take apart if you had a giant skimmer, which the government definitely did.

She’d taken the blocks from her father’s toolbox after he’d floated away. No one, not her mother, not her brother, not even those strange government men in suits who gave her family the news, had tried to take them away from her. They were hers just as much as they had once been his. Grown-up toys, they’d called them. But to her, they were more than that.

After two hours, she’d gotten her time down to four minutes and twenty-six seconds. Good enough for now. She stretched, her neck aching, and then walked downstairs and ordered a snack pack from the kitchen bot, chocolate chip flavored. She sat by herself at the counter, her legs swinging in the air from the stool, gravity meter ticking steadily at her hip.

“Fina, Fina! It’s broken!”

Her brother rushed into the kitchen waving something that looked like an old Earth egg-beater. Seraphina had given it to him for his fifth birthday. It was a handheld gaming console, something he could sneak after lights-out and play. The Sleep Police couldn’t pick up on it because it operated on a secret wavelength. It projected a hologram of the game onto any flat surface and, if he wore it with the virtual glasses he had, it could take him anywhere he wanted.

Once she’d caught him using it to go to virtual school at Seraphina’s instruction center which, given his position, wasn’t allowed.

“What are you doing?” she’d asked.

“Being normal,” he’d replied. “I just like to stand in the back and watch.”

Sometimes, if she closed her eyes hard enough, she could feel him in the back of the classroom. One of the invisible.

His dark curls fell into his eyes, and he brushed them away.

“What happened?” she asked, setting down her chocolate-chip bar. He eyed the snack before handing over the toy.

“It stopped lighting up, and now it just fizzles every time I try to turn it on.”

She frowned, shook it, turned it upside down, and punched a few buttons. It whined. She’d need to take a closer look at the wires.

“I’ll fix it tonight,” she said.

“Caleb, please return to the nursery,” a robotic voice resounded through the halls.

“Just one second,” Caleb called over his shoulder before turning to Seraphina.

Something in his eyes told her that he hadn’t come out here at all to have her fix his toy. No. He was curious about something else. She didn’t need to look closer at the device to know he’d sabotaged it on purpose, just so he could talk to her.

“You got a message you know. In the tube,” he said.

“So?” Seraphina said, her mouth full of chocolate chips.

“Can I watch you open it?”

She waited for him to get bored with her and just walk away. She ate the entire bar, slowly.

He didn’t move.

Her mother often joked that it was his curiosity and persistence that got him banned from school. Seraphina knew the world didn’t work that way; the doctors said he had some sort of genetic mutation that made him different from everyone else. She had it, too, not enough to keep her from going to school, but she always knew what she was. And whatever it was that they both had, it gave them things other people didn’t see or understand. Like super-powered brains. And for Seraphina, a few other not-so-nice things.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll open it.”

She pushed off from the table and landed on the floor, the gravity sensors pulling at her bare toes. Their home on Mars, according to the chart readouts, had a far lighter gravity than her ancestors’ original home on Earth. The first settlers had coated the planet in some sort of gravity paint that helped hold everyone in place. Or at least that was what it was supposed to do.

She’d once found a corner of her instruction center in the cafeteria that had a little less gravity than normal. She wouldn’t have noticed except for the fact that her toes floated an inch above the ground before she righted herself. After that, she’d designed her own personal gravity meter and kept an eye on the readouts. She didn’t want to just start floating away into the hazy purple sky in the middle of an afternoon.

Caleb followed her back to the front room, the message pinging insistently as she neared.

She took a deep breath and swiped her finger across the monitor. A flash of fear went through her.

What if she didn’t get in?

What if Mark was the only one in her class allowed to go?

What if she, Seraphina Saff, wasn’t good enough?

The letter folded out in front of her in the air, the robotic voice of the holomail reverberating in space. She wanted to tell it to be quiet, but her tongue was heavy in her mouth.

“Dear Ms. Seraphina Saff,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into this year’s Builders for the Future competition. You were one of 20 selections within Colony M.

The competition will be 24 hours in total and will take place in the Central Mars Natatorium on West Street two days from now at 12:00 Lunar Time. You are not allowed to bring anything with you, and you will be scanned for tools, data chips, and blueprints upon arrival.

Best of luck.”

Caleb whooped, jumping up and down. “You made it, you made it!”

Seraphina didn’t move. She didn’t even smile. Her hands started to shake, though, and the urge she’d been fighting all her life, the urge to destroy something out of pure joy struck her in the chest.

“I need to practice,” she blurted out as Caleb wrapped his arms around her middle.

“Can I come watch?” Caleb asked, his arms still locked tightly around her.

She wasn’t sure if he meant watching her practice or watching her competition. With her right hand, she gently pushed him away.

“No,” she said, even though something in her chest pulled, and she knew she shouldn’t have said it.

Caleb frowned, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “But…”

Seraphina did not wait for him to finish his sentence. Clutching the hologram chip to her chest, she walked back upstairs and locked her bedroom door behind her.

She had made it. At eleven, she was one of the youngest Mars pioneers to be selected for the program. The first woman who orbited Jupiter had won the competition years ago. Famous people were made in the builders’ competition.

Like her dad.

The urge to break something pinged through her like a zip of electricity, and she headed for the desk. Placing the letter on the table, she reached for the mini hovercraft she’d built. Her skimmer tore it to pieces, fingers finding every dent and crack. It felt good to destroy something, to reduce it to nothing. The letter on her desk pulsed with energy as she took a deep breath and eyed the timer beside her. She needed to practice.

Making it into the BFF competition wasn’t enough for her, she decided, her hand hovering over the punch clock. She needed to beat Mark.

She needed to win.

By the time she got to school the next day, everyone already knew she’d been selected. A hush descended over the classroom pod as she entered. No one talked to her in school anyway, so walking into the classroom was the worst part of every day. Her stomach curled, and her fingers itched, and she wished she was back in her room with her model. Wished she could have just switched with Caleb for the day and stayed home.

She sat down at her desk.

Greetings, Ms. Saff. Today, we will continue your lesson in geometry.

She rolled her eyes. She’d covered this weeks ago when she couldn’t fall asleep. Numbly, her fingers moved across the screen, answering before the computer could finish asking her the question.

After her classmates tired of staring at her, they faced their own desks and commenced their lessons.

Maybe, if she was very quiet and careful about it, she could take one of her “sick day” pills she’d self-engineered and get released early for the day. She needed to practice, after all.

A throat cleared somewhere above her, and she looked up to see Mark smirking at her. He folded his grasshopper-thin arms in front of his chest, his greasy black hair shining in the LED light. Like the rest of them, he wore a normal silver jumpsuit with an orange stripe around the right bicep and an emergency oxygen machine pinholed to the back, just in case the oxygen bubble that covered all of Colony M popped.

“Heard we were the only two who made it into the competition from our sector,” he said casually.

She did not look up at him.

“Interesting,” she replied.

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” he asked.

Her fingers paused and she glared at her screen. “Not unless you’re going to congratulate me.”

He snickered, his eyes narrowing.

“Fine,” he said. “I’m surprised you made it at all, really. With that held-back brother of yours and the rumors I hear about you, I didn’t think they’d let people like you in.”

Seraphina’s fists clenched, her heart racing.

Don’t, she told herself. She pressed her lips together hard, her blood beating fiercely in her ears.

“Maybe they just felt bad for your family. I mean, your dad won years ago, right? He was older than us, but we can’t all be prodigies. Maybe they feel bad for you after his little accident and all. Trying to make up for the fact that one of his kids won’t ever amount to anything, that he never really got to leave anything behind that was worthwhile.”

She couldn’t feel her hands as she stood up, the chair whirring away from her.

Ms. Saff, please return to your seat, her monitor spoke aloud.

She ignored it.

“Don’t,” she warned.

Everyone else in the class had stopped working to watch the pair. If by the third warning neither of them had sat down, the AI would call a monitor. They had minutes.

“Don’t what? I’m only telling the truth,” Mark said. “You’re probably just as stupid as your slow brother.”

She wouldn’t have cared if Mark had just insulted her personally. She knew she was smarter than him, and she felt nothing at all for him. But Mark had never met Caleb, didn’t know the things he could do. Because of some test Caleb hadn’t passed but couldn’t study for, he’d never be allowed to show them.

Her clenched fist connected with Mark’s nose before she even knew what happened. It crunched beneath her hand.

Mark yelped, a high-pitched screech. Pain exploded over her knuckles but she didn’t even flinch.

An alarm sounded somewhere nearby, and she wasn’t sure if one of her classmates had pulled the alert, or if they’d exceeded their number of warnings.

“You broke my nose!” Mark grunted, hands still covering his face.

“I hope it hurt,” she replied. It didn’t even sound like her, tinny and far away.

Inside though, she was shaking. She’d barely ever touched another human being. Hugs made her squirm, and even when she’d been a mini-kid, she hated holding her mother’s hand. Which was one of her superpowers, her mother always said.

Blood from Mark’s nose dripped off her finger, and she wiped it on the shoulder of his jumpsuit.

“Don’t ever insult my brother again,” she added. The threat sounded weird when she said it out loud, not like herself, but what was she supposed to do? It was her brother!

The metal door of the class pod screeched open, and two large AIs entered and stalked toward them. They were seven feet tall with blue-gray laser eyes. All four narrowed in on Mark and Seraphina.

“Step away from one another and put your hands on the desk in front of you,” the first AI instructed.

Seraphina held Mark’s eyes as she put her hands on her keypad. He wiped his nose before setting his palms down on the panel in front of him. Scarlet smeared the white surface. Her punch still crackled across her knuckles.

She wasn’t sorry.

The first AI approached. “You, come with me,” it said to Seraphina.

“And you, with me,” the second said to Mark.

As they walked down the aisle of desks, Seraphina held Mark’s gaze and didn’t let him see how terrified she was of what was about to happen.

The AI replayed the video of what happened and, instead of watching a scene she’d already been a part of, Seraphina stared at the shock on the Head of the Pod’s face.

At the end, she paused the video and shook her head once, her pixie cut shaking back and forth in a wave of gold. “This isn’t good.”

“I know,” Seraphina said, “but he said terrible things about my brother.”

“They’re just words, Seraphina. They can’t do anything to you,” the Head replied.

Deep down, Seraphina knew this wasn’t true at all. Sometimes words were the most painful blow. Sometimes they could force people to change their entire life for good and bad. But she didn’t want to argue. Not when she was already in trouble.

“Do you know the first rule of Colony M, Seraphina?” the Head asked.

“Yes,” Seraphina responded. “Rule Number One of Colony M: No violence allowed.”

“And why do we have this rule, Seraphina?” the Head asked.

Seraphina didn’t squirm, just looked the Head in the eye and spoke words she’d memorized back in year six.

“Because so few people actually made it here from Earth.”

The Head leaned forward, her watery eyes sad. “Every life on Mars matters,” the Head said, pointing at the banner above her desk, the exact words blinking in hologram light.

Existence mattered. But living in Colony M—things like going outside or going to school—had requirements. Ones that Caleb hadn’t met. Ones she almost hadn’t, either.

“I have to punish you. We have a zero-tolerance policy for violence. And given your background, it worries us.”

Background. Genes. Same thing. Seraphina’s hands itched to destroy something, but she held steady.

“I understand,” Seraphina managed to choke out, even though her eyes had started burning.

“Your invitation to the Build of the Future competition will be revoked. And you’re put on a two-week suspension pending a community jury decision and psychological evaluation.”

The words almost split Seraphina in half. Her insides burned. She’d worked so hard, putting in years of preparation, and they were going to take BFF away from her just because she’d stood up to a bully? Later, her mother would say it could have been much worse. She could have been detained and put on a watch list. She could have been sent away from her mother and Caleb to an entirely different colony. Her mom said this a lot, and the more adults said something, Seraphina decided, the more you knew they didn’t believe it themselves. Could have been worse? Everything was as bad as it could possibly be.

No.

“No, what?” the Head asked.

Did I really say that out loud? Seraphina thought.

“No,” Seraphina said again, louder this time, “that’s not a fair punishment.”

“I think I’m going pretty easy on you actually, given the circumstances,” the Head said, her thin eyebrows rising. They weren’t the same color as the hair on her head, Seraphina realized.

Once a family had one selection in a generation, it was over. Builders were innovators of the future. They went to special schools. They were the ones who got to take building blocks to labs and create things. They got huge skimmers. Her mother worked in disease research, her father had been a builder. Caleb would never be allowed to work and support any of them. Seraphina had been their only chance.

But maybe not.

“Let Caleb sub in for me. Don’t let my family lose our only spot. Please, just let him play instead.”

Seraphina couldn’t believe she’d said the words.

The Head raised her eyebrows higher. “I’m not sure we can do something like that.”

“You can,” Seraphina insisted. “Just let Caleb compete for me. I won that spot regardless of what happened today. At least let a Saff into the competition. I know people can only be selected, ever, once.”

It was fair. And really, the Head probably thought it would be to her advantage. There was a little bit of shuffling and grumbling, but Seraphina could already see that the Head was thinking about it. She could tell because Caleb’s file had popped up on the corner of the Head’s eyelet reader. Hyper. Difficulty concentrating. Dyslexic. Unfocused. Slow. Really, what were the odds in the Head’s mind that Caleb could win at all?

“He won’t be allowed any special considerations,” the Head said. “He’ll be treated as a normal participant.”

If this was the deal, Seraphina had to take it. And it didn’t matter, because Seraphina was sure Caleb could show Mark who the real genius was.

“Fine,” she said.

“I’ll talk it over with the Committee. See what they say,” the Head said. “Now the AI will escort you back to your Living Pod.”

With a smile and with hands that no longer itched to destroy something, Seraphina walked out of the Learning Center. For the rest of the day, even though she could still see Mark smirking at her in the back of her mind, she already felt like she’d won.

Caleb’s letter came the same way Seraphina’s had, approximately two hours after her fight with Mark. Caleb didn’t know that his sister had stood up for him in school or that people outside of their living pod even knew who he was.

The letter winked at him. His name. Even though a few of the letters danced away from him, he knew it was his. And this time, when he punched the traction tube with his fingerprint, the glass slid open for him.

It took him a few tries to read the whole thing through, but at the end of the letter, his eyes lit up. He was going to get to be like his big sister for once and play the game! He spent the next few hours raiding Seraphina’s room for her blocks. It had taken him a half-hour to get into her room, but he’d managed to crack the code on the door and rewire it to use the password “Fart Bubbles”.

The blocks were smooth and sleek beneath his fingers. He’d seen her build things with them—planes and cars and hovercrafts and houses. Just like Dad had before he’d floated away into the sky. She’d said they were for practice, and he needed to practice, too.

When Seraphina came home, she walked into her room to find Caleb sitting at her desk, eyes frowning in concentration at the structure in front of him: a strangely tilted silver tower. It was different than what she normally came up with, and she had to bite her tongue to ask him what he was doing with her blocks.

“Congrats!” she said.

He turned, dropping the blocks, rushing to give her a hug. His arms wrapped around her waist, and she was suddenly surprised at how small he was. He smiled a dizzying smile.

“I’ve been practicing,” he said.

Seraphina’s gut clenched. She knew what she’d lost, and now all the pressure was on Caleb. She smiled and squeezed him back even though her eyes burned a little with the thought that she’d never get to compete.

“Can you help me get ready?” he asked.

She wanted to, she did, but the Head had said she couldn’t help him. Then again, the Head had never really dealt with Saffs before.

“I know you can do it all by yourself,” she said.

At the words, he stepped back, arms crossed in front of his chest. He frowned, cheeks reddening. “You’re just afraid I’ll beat you,” he said.

Seraphina shrugged, her chest aching. If she told him the truth, he’d get mad. He wouldn't understand. She hated lying to him, but she couldn’t tell him she’d gotten into a fight over something mean someone he didn’t even know had said about him.

“I am,” she said. She walked over to his old egg-beater toy and turned it on. “Now, as long as we keep it a secret, we can practice.”

And even though Caleb didn’t understand, he smiled all the same.

Caleb had never seen anything like it. In fact, there were only a few places he’d been to beyond his house in Colony M. Sometimes, he’d go weeks without seeing the purple and orange sky, the double moons. He didn’t know so many people even lived in Colony M.

The natatorium was shaped like an old Earth horseshoe. A detector flanked each entrance to the arena. His mother took him to an enormous titanium door. His name was emblazoned on the top of it in large chunky letters: Caleb Stamford Saff.

“Do I get to keep the door because it has my name on it?” he asked.

His mother laughed as she crouched down beside him. “Never hurts to ask. Though I’m not sure where you’d put it.”  

He nodded seriously as she shuttled him toward his entrance. Seraphina was nowhere to be found.

“Does Seraphina have a door?” he asked, even though he was sure she had the biggest door in the arena.

“Go on,” his mother said. “You don’t want to be late.”

“But she’s going to miss it!” he told his mother.

“Don’t worry about her. This is about you, Caleb. It’s your turn,” she said, her eyes fiercely glittering. “Your dad would be so proud of you.”

Dad. Caleb only remembered him a little. He was like Seraphina. Always working with blocks. Always away. Maybe, if the natatorium had an open top, he could watch Caleb play the game from up there.

His mother helped him step onto a conveyer belt that led to the first detector. She looked so far away as it swept him away from her.

“Sir, your letter, please,” a bot with a sleek, featureless face and a narrow body of connecting bolts and plates said as he approached.

He offered the bot his letter chip to scan, even though he wanted to keep it forever and ever and never let it go. The bot’s arms swept around him and boosted him into the detector’s seat. A flash of white left spots on his eyes, and then he was moving again.

The conveyor belt slipped underneath his feet, and he was taken through a narrow tunnel, the walls made of thick cushions. It brought him to a room about the size of his bedroom, square, with walls made of the same strange, bouncy cushions. The room was so silent he could hear his stomach growl.  He couldn’t see the crowd that sat in the amphitheater seats above him, gazing down at his small white box. He didn’t know Seraphina was among them, seated at the very front, right next to their mom.

Seraphina pressed her hand to the glass that separated the crowd from the BFF work stations. A bruise still blushed across its knuckles. Her heart held steady. She wondered what it felt like to be Caleb right now in that little box. Did he feel like their dad had when he’d done this?

“I believe in you,” she whispered. She didn’t even bother looking for Mark’s station. He wasn’t worth her viewing time.

“He’ll be great,” her mom whispered to her. “You did such a good thing.”

Good was something her genes said she was incapable of doing. It was time to show them all what the Saffs could do. So Seraphina closed her eyes and nodded and wondered what was going on in the box.

“Welcome, Caleb Saff,” a voice said. Caleb’s head swiveled to watch a part of the puffy wall detach itself, metal eyes blinking to life on the top pillow.  

“Hi,” Caleb said.

“I will be your assistant for the entirety of the competition,” it said. A metal arm reached toward him from its padding and offered him a backpack full of snacks. He peered inside. Seraphina wouldn’t be happy with it, because they didn’t give them any chocolate chip flavored packs.

He took the pack and placed it against one of the walls, far from him because he knew he’d just eat all the snacks if it was right next to him.

“The competition will begin momentarily,” the bot said.

“Is my sister there yet?” Caleb asked. He wondered if she was right next door to him, her fingers itching because she hadn’t been allowed to bring her blocks.    

“I cannot reveal information about fellow competitors,” the bot said.

That was the most annoying thing Caleb had ever heard.

He sighed. There had to be a way that he could get the bot to tell him about Seraphina. The bots at the house were pretty easy to convince. And by convince, Caleb meant playing with the wiring. When the bot eventually turned its pillow face away from him, maybe Caleb could trick it.

“In thirty seconds, you will be given your assignment,” the bot said.

A rumbling overtook the padded box, and a glass plank rose out of a rectangular divot in the floor. Caleb wandered over to it, more curious than afraid. On it were a bunch of tools. He recognized only one, but his eyes lit up. A few moments of silence, and then the box rumbled again. The bot blinked at Caleb.

Little bit little, the pillowed padding of the box slid off the walls, melting and draining until nothing was left but the strange gray color of Mars’ gravity paint. Above Caleb, the roof of the box slid away, revealing the far-away open-skied ceiling of the amphitheater.

“Your assignment is to escape this box using only the tools in here,” the bot intoned. Before him was a scraper, a wire, a few pieces of magnetic string, a meter, and a set of Seraphina’s building blocks.

Caleb smiled wickedly. His focus bounced around the four walls, his mind whirring and fracturing, already working out a way.

And the competition began.

It took Caleb about ten minutes to dismantle the bot. He managed to tie its arms with the magnetic string, his fingers working through the plush to find the battery-operated innards. He hadn’t wanted to take it apart, but it kept talking at him, telling him what not to do, and it wasn’t helping him focus at all.

He then began with the scraper. Because, if there was one thing Seraphina and Dad had taught him, it was how to fly.

Seraphina watched Caleb. Her fingers traced the gravity meter at her hip, and she smiled. They couldn’t have picked a better challenge for him. A part of herself was down there, working with him, beside him, egging him on. He must have seen her make her own gravity meter once. Always watching. Asking questions.

She’d built it, not just because of that one place in her Learning Center, but actually because of their dad. He’d vanished when she was eight due to poor gravity coverage in a neighboring colony. His suit was never found. Out of fear of floating away, she’d built her own meter, even though a part of her had wanted to go up after him, to find him after all those years.

“He’s going to do it,” she whispered to her mom.

Her mom said nothing, just squeezed her hand.

She watched Caleb chip away at the gravity paint on the bottom of his cube. She watched him attach the magnetic wires on the walls to look like a ladder. With one hand, he fashioned the building blocks into a belt at his waist.

It was funny to watch him work. He flickered across the box, back and forth and back and forth so many times that Seraphina couldn’t count. Sure, he should have adjusted a few things and maybe done something with the meter they had given him, but he wasn’t her. And she was okay with that.

As the time wore on, she watched him test his device over and over. Each time, he scraped off a little more of the gravity paint until a sizeable section of the rightmost corner of the floor was gone.

On the tenth try, he managed to attach the belt to the magnetic wire stairs and crest the top of the box.

She stood up, a smile on her face, her ears deaf to the announcer saying his name. She turned from the arena and walked to the door.

Never once did she look for Mark.

Caleb and Seraphina stood at the door of their house. It was early, earlier than Caleb had ever woken up in his life. He wanted to hold her hand but didn’t, keeping it firmly pressed against his side. A blue armband wrapped around his right bicep; a pack was secured across his back.

“Ready?” Seraphina asked.

He took a deep breath. Even though he hadn’t won the BFF, even though he’d been disqualified for dismantling the bot, this was a better reward than he’d ever been given before. And at least Mark hadn’t won, either.

Underneath it all, Seraphina knew they didn’t need the competition to do great things. She’d already done one so far. Even though she hated touching people, she grabbed his hand.

Caleb ducked his head and smiled.

“You’ll do fine, I promise,” she said.

Swallowing hard, he nodded. He hadn’t even had to dismantle a bot to leave the house this time. They were letting him go to school. Of course he was nervous.

“And if anyone gives you a hard time,” Seraphina added, “you tell them I’m your sister.” Even though the bruises on her knuckles had faded, she wouldn’t forget. Together they moved toward the door, out into the purple hazy sky of colony M. The freedom of this, Caleb decided, was almost as good as flying.