PERSONAL RECORD: DESIGNATION ZETA4542910-9545E
CONSORTIUM TRAINING CENTER ALPHA, ALBANY CITY, NEW TRITON
478.3.1.04
“Move aside,” someone ordered.
Though unarmed, I stood, ready to strike a blow against whomever—
The Recorder-doctor stood there in his pants and undershirt, his tunic missing.
“Where is your drone?” I demanded, as if it were supremely important, as if the question were logical.
“At the gate. I left without permission, even if the Eldest did not stop me. I suspect she is displeased.” All his attention on Max, he knelt beside James. “I no longer have a tunic, and it is unapproved that I go shirtless.” He snapped his fingers. “Remove your jacket, citizen.”
“Westruther,” I said.
“Your jacket, Westruther.”
James complied, and the Recorder-doctor snugged it around Max’s head.
“Aberrant, Westruther, there is nothing either of you can do here and now.” His voice became unsteady. “I came to help the children, but I have only seen Recorders. I have not found any of the novices and the little ones. I cannot, however, betray an oath higher than the one binding me to the Consortium. I must provide assistance. Could you, perhaps—would you find the children?”
“I held my mother while she died,” James said. “I cannot leave m—”
“Max,” I inserted. He could not be allowed to betray himself.
James’s throat worked for two seconds. “I cannot abandon him now.”
“Please,” the Recorder begged. “Go. You cannot care for the wounded, but you can find the children. You came to protect them. Find them now and save them, if you can. Once those citizens have been stopped, I can access the clinic’s tanks and emergency generators. You help the children; I will help him.”
“You are certain”—my voice broke—“he will not die?”
“Scalp wounds bleed prolifically, and I will not pull that knife free yet,” the Recorder-doctor said, avoiding my question. “The sooner I get him—and the others—into tanks, the better off they all will be.” Pale hazel eyes pled with us. “I cannot care for him and still search.”
He was correct, and as much as I wanted to stay with Max, the memories of my cohort and the other nameless novices propelled me to my feet.
I touched James’s arm. “You need to remain at Max’s side. I will go.”
“The Recorder-doctor’s point is valid.” James carefully lowered his father to the floor and wiped his hands, slick with red, on his pant leg. His eyes still on Max, he added, “I would not lose my friend as well. I am with you.”
A scream echoed up the hall.
“Find them,” the Recorder said.
With one more look at Max, we left.
We found nothing until we reached the nurseries, where divots in the wall told of weapons’ fire. Two Recorders lay dying in the floor’s dim, chemical light.
James knelt to ask after the children, but the woman pressed her mouth shut. His angled eyebrows drew down. “She does not trust me.”
“You are not of the Consortium. Today, who can blame her?” I set my hand on my forehead. “I cannot think, James. There was a passcode—but no, the power is off.”
He stepped over the Recorder to pound on the door, shouting that we meant no harm, that the enemies were contained in the hall under the Scriptorium, that the Eldest knew we were present.
The door ground open. A Caretaker in pale grey blocked our way, brandishing a child’s chair like a weapon. As she studied our faces, the chair lowered.
Her eyebrowless forehead wrinkled. “I-I know you. How do I know citizens?”
“I am Consortium,” I confessed.
“You have . . .” She gestured at my hair, but then her mouth fell open. “You are the primary aberration. We have heard of you, even here.” Her eyes dropped to my blood-stained greys, then over to James, who stood straight as any Recorder. She backed up, one hand on the door as if ready to close it. “Are they gone?”
“Not yet,” James said, “but we have been sent to help the children.”
Her forehead crinkled. “This is true?”
“Yes,” I answered.
The Caretaker peered past us, then spoke over her shoulder. “It is well.”
A chorus of voices responded, but no one else emerged.
“Aberration, I remember when you were small.” Her expression shifted as she regarded James. “And you . . .”
I grabbed his sleeve, ready to tell him to run.
But instead of denouncing him, the Caretaker moved closer. After three seconds of her eyes searching his, she reached up to touch his face. “You are well. And a citizen, I see. I must have been wrong. I remember neither you nor your sister.” Her smile faded, and she edged back a meter. “After Sigma fell, the Eldest decreed all nurseries should have a chemical backup specialist present. The gifting tanks are secure.”
The youngest, the infants, the tanks—all safe. For two seconds, I leaned against James’s steady shoulder and allowed that mercy to sink into my heart.
“She also decreed Caretakers have drones deactivated, so we would not accidentally harm the ones in our care.” Her gaze strayed to the fallen Recorders near our feet, and she shuddered. “We are secure, but the older children and the novices—were they not in the chamber under the Scriptorium?”
“That is where the fighting is taking place,” I said. “I saw no children.”
“There were none when we arrived,” James added.
A divot appeared over the Caretaker’s nose. “I do not know to whence they would flee.”
Again, I reviewed the layout in my head, trying to hold onto a mental map. “That, then, is our task. Please shut and bar the door until the Eldest comes.”
“Find them. Keep them safe,” the Caretaker charged us, then the door ground shut.
Again, James and I stepped over and around the fallen. My limp became more pronounced, so I kept one hand on the wall for balance.
“I think I know where to look,” I said. “You will not like it.”
“As if there is much to like about today.”
“The Hall of Reclamation.”
He huffed. “You are correct on both counts. I do not like the idea, but the Halls are deep underground. While the citizens do not know of it, the children do.” James exhaled. “It is a long walk. I will carry you.”
At first, I declined the offer, but after another quarter kilometer, I consented to ride on his back. He trudged on through spotless halls made eerie by blue illumination.
When we reached the steel doors leading into the cave-like room, he set me down. “I never wanted to come back here. I never wanted to see those tanks again.”
“I can go alone.”
“No. We go together.”
I nodded, and we pushed the doors open.
Nothing brightened the expanse. My dread of darkness nearly took me, but James set his hand on my shoulder. Scuffling noises echoed, as unlike insectile movement as warmth was unlike ice.
We had found them.
“Little ones? Novices?” I called. “We are not here to harm you. We are friends.”
A childish figure of perhaps twelve years stepped into the dim rectangle of light cast through the open door. Her chin jutted at a defiant angle. I dropped to my knees and stretched out an arm, but she came no closer.
“Who are you?” the novice asked. “Consortium or foe?”
“Neither. Though once I was a novice.”
She eyed me. “No one abandons the Consortium.”
“And that is why we are here.” Even James’s steady voice seemed small in that expanse. “You are not abandoned.”
Other children crept from the shadows. A little one darted out and grabbed the novice’s legs, and a slight boy strode forward to stand, stance wide, arms crossed, at the first girl’s side.
“James,” I said. “Would you return to check on the others and clear a path for us?”
“She means the bodies,” the first child explained to the slight boy. “I counted eight hundred thirty-nine at Training Center Sigma.”
I repressed a shudder.
“Indeed. There is no cause for you to witness what has been lost.” James turned to me. “You will be safe here?”
“We will.”
My friend left, and the children crawled from their hiding places toward the faint, blue light cast through the open door. I sat with them for what seemed hours. My joints ached and my stomach gnawed before James returned, guiding Lars and Zhen to the Halls.
“It is over,” James said. “The tunnels are clear.”
“James was good about that.” Lars set a hand on James’s shoulder. “Has a good head, too. I couldn’t have found the way down here, but he used an access panel in the southwest dormitory. Anyway, Jackson and Quincy say it’s all clear.”
The children stared at him.
The slight boy asked, “Are you certain?”
“’Course I’m sure. Wouldn’t ever send a bunch of kids into danger,” he protested. “And the deputy prime minister came through. Has a bunch of cafés and such sending food.” He squatted down to eye level with the boy. “You kids like food, right?”
The boy nodded.
The little one peeked around the first child’s legs. “Will they have pie?”
“Dunno.” The tall marine grinned. “But tell you what. If they don’t, you and me’ll find a kitchen and make some. Pie crusts are tricky, but I bet we can handle it.”
The slight boy gasped. “Can we?”
“Don’t see why not.”
A small girl crept forward, wide-eyed in the near darkness. “Are your muscles real?”
Zhen snorted.
Lars presented his arm. “Far as I know. Give it a punch.”
She glanced around and, when no one said anything, tapped his arm.
“Nah, put some swing in it,” he added, then made an exaggerated grimace when she hit him a little harder. “See?”
She giggled, then caught herself, and all color drained from her face.
I knew that look. Guilt. Anticipation of punishment. A knot of anger rose in my chest. Laughter should not produce fear.
A thunderous growl reverberated through the Halls, and everyone froze until the slow thrum of the circulation fans resumed. A few children cheered.
“Nate and Alec did it,” Zhen exclaimed. “Moons and stars, it’s good to have air.”
However, when the dim lights flickered on, Lars and Zhen stared ashen-faced and open-mouthed into the vast room with its rows upon rows of tanks, now dark. Whether or not their inmates had lived mere hours ago, they did not now.
The first girl touched my arm. “A child is missing.”
“You sure?” Lars asked.
She scowled at him. “I counted.”
“Only one is an acceptable loss,” a short girl said.
“That is untrue,” I said more sharply than I should have. I softened my voice. “Who is it?”
“A girl of the sixth cohort.”
“Stay here,” I said, and when she protested, I added, “The others know you. They will feel safer. Lars, help me search.”
She conceded, so while James and Zhen organized the group, Lars and I prowled the darkened aisles.
I found her. A tiny girl of six years, huddled in a ball, shrinking back from my approach.
“It is well, little one,” I said quietly. “The bad people are contained, and it is safe.”
She scrunched farther against the silent tank.
“I am going to call my friend. His name is Lars, and he is very kind.” I leaned back. “Lars, I have found her.”
“Good show! Need help?”
“I do not, but tell the others. The first novice is concerned.”
I settled down to wait until the little one uncurled and sidled over to me. We rejoined the others. James offered to carry me again, but I declined. I kept my hand on the wall as the little one I had found, the first novice, and I slowly led the way from the Halls to the surface. Behind us walked two hundred thirty-nine children, and behind them, James and Lars closed the doors on the Hall of Reclamation.