24

I don’t know where I’m going.

There are doors and more doors, and branching corridors. I run, crashing into the walls and dragging myself around corners. My stomach heaves, and I try to stop it, but it’s no good. Remnants of my breakfast end up on the floor.

I wipe bile off my mouth with the back of my palm. An elevator appears, and I stagger into it. My fingers slip on the emergency brake knob, then pull it so the whining of the shaft breaks off.

In the corner, I curl up in a ball, drenched in sweat and crying and shivering.

I’ll be okay.

I cough up something that tastes like blood.

Why am I not okay?

Whatever’s inside the monthly injection did something to me, the same way the intelligence hub did something to me. But the hub did something to everyone else, so maybe that’s happening now too. Maybe the other Extractions are fine—or as fine as vacant, expressionless people can be.

I have to focus. I solve Yate’s Equation—the longest and hardest equation a person can solve—in my head to help myself calm down.

I try to think. I think back to yesterday, to the helmet over my head, and the cold gas seeping out of the tubes, and me breathing it in. At first it made me feel like I was floating, content with everything, trusting the Developers. And then it didn’t—then it made me hurt almost as bad as my body hurts now.

The gas and the injection must be made from the same chemical.

But the gas didn’t hurt Oliver, Ariadne, or the other Extractions. It made them more like robots.

The injection didn’t work, Cadet Waller said. She’s not being submissive.

It hits me. I know what the chemical is. That time in the hub wasn’t the first time I’ve been this sick—this happened to me before.

*   *   *

It was wintertime, and I had just turned eight. A slick layer of ice covered the ground. Since the crop fields were dead, everyone had to work in either the packaging warehouse or the greenhouses, where plants continued to grow hydroponically under special lights.

Logan, Laila, and I were following the train tracks home one night, running so we wouldn’t catch frostbite, when the hovercraft passed by overhead. It looked like it had come from the city and was on its way outside the settlement, for whatever reason. It was flying too low, and there was an opening at the back. When the ship tilted toward the sky to gain altitude, a couple bundles fell out and nearly landed on top of us. I screamed as Logan pulled me out of the way, tripped over a track, and skinned my knees.

While I wiped the ice off my trousers and tried to make my teeth stop chattering, Laila took a hesitant step closer to one of the bundles. Its drawstring was already loose. A simple touch made its contents spill onto the ice: delicate green stems with silver petals.

Laila’s laughter pealed through the air. “Look at these!” She pulled a heap of them into her arms. “Real flowers!”

Logan picked up one of the asters. He turned to me with a radiant smile. “I bet they’d look pretty in your hair,” he said, and tucked the stem behind my ear.

*   *   *

A cold wave of air washes over me in the elevator, making my teeth chatter. I feel like I did then, once the aster pollen seeped through my skin into my bloodstream. But I was tough, and the fever broke after a couple days. It wasn’t until later that I heard the story about the Core scientist who genetically modified aster flowers to make them useful as stress or pain relievers for sick patients.

But when we learned about the asters in school, there was no mention of their pollen being used in great amounts, even in the sanitarium. Yet silver asters were on the Surface in the back of the hovercraft that day when I was eight, for one reason or another. And their calming effect didn’t work on me. My body attacked the serum instead of accepting it.

I stare at my shaking hands.

I’m allergic to silver asters. I’m having the same allergic reaction to whatever injection they gave me.

They must have used pollen in the monthly injections.

A knock on the elevator door snaps me out of my head.

“Hello?” The voice is muffled through the wall, but firm like an official’s. “Is someone in there?”

Oh no. I pressed the emergency brake knob—it must have alerted security. Sam did that before, and security didn’t come, but he’s an army lieutenant. The army is security.

I get to my feet, breathing fast, and use the wall for support. I hold down the button that keeps the door shut, release the emergency knob, and press the first floor number I find. Twelve. Good, someplace far away.

The elevator rumbles as it starts to rise, leaving behind the official pounding his fist on the wall. I drop to my knees and hold my head in my hands. My stomach churns again, and I clamp a palm over my mouth so I won’t vomit.

Silver aster pollen can’t be for disease prevention or Promise elevation, it doesn’t work like that. The pollen releases two hormones: serotonin and GABA. Serotonin calms and relieves stress; GABA slows overall brain activity. My school instructors always focused on the fact that pollen could be a pain and stress reliever, but if GABA slows the brain, it also inhibits reason. It could make it easy for a person to be influenced by someone else.

It could make people submissive.

Maybe the flowers were in the back of the hovercraft that day when I was younger because the ship was headed to the Karum treatment facility, where Unstables are kept. Maybe the Developers use the pollen to make Unstables submissive, to try to cure their craziness.

But they use the pollen on civilians too. They administer the injection once a month, probably in a subtle dose that keeps everyone docile. It makes them easy to influence.

No wonder no one has any issue with the murder of child workers in the outer sectors. Commander Charlie is controlling all of his citizens.

Wheezing, I lift my head and scan the buttons for the decks. I need to find Beechy. He said he was like me before—he said he had trouble during the last part of his citizenship training, and he must’ve meant the intelligence machines.

Maybe the pollen didn’t affect him, either. Maybe it still doesn’t. Maybe he can help me.

But I don’t know where he is. The elevator jolts to a stop before I can figure out which floor to try.

Nausea overtakes me again. I stumble out of the elevator, open the first door I find, and stick my head into a trash chute in the wall.

A snapping sound comes from a ceiling speaker. “Attention.”

I freeze, still leaning over the chute, my mouth dripping and a putrid smell filling my nostrils. The voice is hoarse, cracking in places. Commander Charlie.

“All citizens of the Core, please report to the Pavilion.”

Another snapping sound.

Silence.

I stare at the white tiles on the floor. I blink to clear my vision, but it remains blurry.

Footsteps echo in the hall outside. A woman’s voice: “—she came up here on one of the elevators. Cadet Waller said her injection went wrong, and Commander Charlie wants her found and subdued.”

My heart skips a beat. Is she looking for me?

“I don’t get why it’s so important we have to find her right this second,” a man’s voice says.

“She’s an Extraction. The commander handpicked her himself.”

I have to get out of here.

“Check that classroom, will you?” the woman says.

Gritting my teeth, I heave my body toward the room’s back door. It opens into another corridor. I hold my breath and try to shut the door softly behind me.

My fingers slip. The clang is loud.

There’s a shout.

My feet move of their own accord, and I run, adrenaline and poison coursing through my veins. They know the injection didn’t work. They want to catch me so they can try again. I can’t let them.

I round a corner and crash into the stairwell banister.

Their footsteps pound on the landing above.

There’s no time. I careen down the stairs, praying I won’t fall and break my neck. But if I did, I’m not sure I’d even notice.

Vaguely, I’m aware of Charlie’s voice over the loudspeaker. He demands, again, that all citizens report to the Pavilion. It could be dangerous, if that’s where he wants me. But in a room filled with ten thousand people, it’d be much easier to blend in.

I throw up twice more before I get there, leaving a trail of vomit for whoever is chasing me to follow. Through a Pavilion door, I squeeze into the crowd slowly filling up the viewing pods, keeping my head low so no one will see my face. There are way too many people. Their body heat makes me sweat even more.

“Clementine?” someone says.

I jump, looking frantically around to see who spoke. Not an official—not the people who are looking for me—please.

It’s Oliver. He waves at me, and slips through the crowd to join me. Even from a distance, I can tell he’s not himself anymore. His smile is too fake; his eyes too unfocused.

I feel like throwing up again. I was afraid this would happen.

“May I join you?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say. We follow some people up the stairs into one of the viewing pods close to the wall. I glance at the crowd still below to make sure no one is following me. Hopefully, I lost that woman and the official. Please.

We settle into the seats in the pod. They’re soft, made of leather. We have a clear view of the Developers’ pod at the far end of the Pavilion. It’s empty right now. The screen above it shows the insignia of the Core.

“Are you excited?” Oliver asks, still smiling. There’s a film or glaze over his blue eyes.

My throat tightens. If I squeezed his hand, if I shook him, would that wake him up? I don’t think so. Silver aster pollen isn’t venom; there isn’t a cure for it.

I swallow, pressing my hands into my lap to still them. “For what?” I ask.

He gestures to the noisy crowd. “The instructors said something important was happening today.”

They must’ve said that after I ran away. My head won’t stop pounding. I want to curl up into a ball. I want to collapse. I want to be done with this.

I draw tangent and cotangent graphs in my head until the crowd quiets. In the Developers’ pod, people step into view, including Commander Charlie. A spotlight shines on him as he moves front and center.

“Here we go.” Oliver’s shoulder brushes against mine.

I want to make him better, but I don’t know how. Tears trickle out of my eyes again, and I feverishly wipe them away.

Commander Charlie’s face fills the video screen. There’s a harsh crease in his brow. “Good evening, civilians. I come to you tonight with news I didn’t wish to share until we were certain it was true.” He pauses, and his eyes sweep the crowd. “You are all aware that our planet is neighbor to a treacherous moon. A long time ago, Kiel’s atmosphere kept us safe from it, but pollution ripped the ozone layer apart. Then came the age of death and terror, and the need for an artificial shield. That shield has managed to keep its full terror at bay for several decades now, with some small exceptions.”

I remember the stories I used to hear about on the Surface: the random deaths of both children and adults from acid corrosion. The signs that the shield particles weakened over time and needed to be replaced to keep us safe.

“I regret to announce that moonshine levels are rising,” Charlie says.

Muttering courses through the crowd.

“Our most skilled scientists have discovered large breaks in the shield where the particles are severely damaged and some of the acid is getting through, affecting more citizens on the Surface than ever before. Hundreds of people.”

I gape at his blurry face in my vision. He must be joking. I was there, what, six days ago?

“Let me show you what I mean,” Charlie says.

His face fades away on the screen. In its place, there’s a dark, rainy street. Moonlight glints on the wall of a skyscraper. Kids huddle together on the pavement, their eyes wide and their bodies shaking.

My heart is pounding.

I hear muffled screams through the screen speakers. Officials haul bodies onto stretchers—some bloody and bruised, others blackened and charred.

The image slowly fades.

“They’re dying up there,” Commander Charlie says softly. “Our scientists have been trying to replace the damaged shield particles, but even the new ones are still allowing leaks. Our technology is no longer keeping the acid at bay, and it has become clear that our planet and people will not last long if we continue to reside beside the moon.”

Blood pounds in my ears, echoing, drowning out the Pavilion. But there’s nothing to drown out. No one speaks.

If we continue to reside beside the moon.

A strained smile touches Charlie’s lips. “Now, please don’t panic. We’ve sorted out a most efficient way to deal with this problem. I will let one of our evolutionary scientists explain.”

He steps back, and a new person steps into the spotlight. A man wearing a lab coat, whose cheeks are a bit green.

Beside me, Oliver stares with a muddled smile.

The scientist clears his throat. “Our tests have confirmed that acid levels beyond the shield have risen nearly fifty-eight percent since the time of the shield’s construction. The materials we used to build the shield are no longer strong enough to keep the acid out. We’ve tried replacing them, we’ve tried using different materials … nothing is working. And, as you saw on the video, it’s already affecting the population up there. Death has become rampant again. Last week alone, there were forty-two deaths in the work camp confirmed to be caused by acid, and in the past week there were fifty-six. It’s only going to get worse. By our estimates, the Surface population will be completely destroyed within the next five to six weeks. The acid will begin seeping into the lower sectors even sooner than that.”

I can’t breathe.

“There is a solution,” the scientist says, “and we have the original Developers to thank for it. They made a smart decision during the construction of the underground sectors: They built the Core as an actual space station. It has powerful ion engines and hyperdrive field generators, with a control room centered in Restricted Division. The engines are strong enough to break us free of the sun’s gravitational pull. In other words, we can fly away from the moon.”

More buzzing in the crowd—a buzz of excitement this time.

But this doesn’t make any sense. Maybe the Core is a space station, maybe we can fly away, but the numbers the scientist mentioned can’t be correct—forty-two deaths caused by acid last week? I was still on the Surface. I would’ve heard about this. I’d have known something was wrong with the shield.

I play through the shots from the video in my head again: the bodies on stretchers; the officials carrying them; the kids watching. They weren’t in the work camp. They were in the Surface city.

Kids from the camp are only allowed in the city one day of the year—the night of the Extraction ceremony. It was raining that night too, I remember. The night of the riot.

I wouldn’t be surprised if forty-two kids were killed by officials that night, but I know the moon didn’t kill them.

“However, the engines aren’t strong enough to move the entire planet,” the scientist continues. “Only the Core can fly away. The engineers who built the lower sectors knew this, and left a gap of lighter steel between the Core and Lower that could potentially be blasted apart.

“Thanks to recent technological developments, this is now possible. We’ve developed a highly concentrated nuclear fission bomb—we call it KIMO—that will send a ripple of energy through the gap. The energy will split the gap and blast the outer sectors away, while at the same time we’ll put up a new, stronger shield around the Core—”

“Essentially,” Commander Charlie cuts in, stepping back into the spotlight, “we can escape, my dear citizens. We will, at last, be free of the moon’s poison. It is a sad reality that we will lose many valuable people in the outer sectors. But this is the only way.”

Murmurs of agreement slide though the crowd.

No, no, no. He’ll kill everyone up there. He must be lying about part of this, at least, but no one except me seems to be questioning him—not even Ariadne or the other Extractions who came from the Surface and know the acid isn’t killing people up there. They’re all subdued.

“We’ll be able to launch KIMO very soon,” Commander Charlie says, clasping his gloved hands against his stomach. “We’re in the midst of final preparations to ensure that the Core’s engines are in pristine condition, and that we’re capable of producing our own food and water and clean air from space matter, so we won’t die without the assistance of the outer sectors.”

I’m shaking my head and making fists with my hands, and everyone can see, but I don’t even care. I want to scream at Charlie. He’ll kill them all. He’ll kill Logan, and all the babies who never get to meet their parents, and all the kids who have only one shot at escape, but are still holding on to hope regardless.

He has a reason, but I don’t believe it.

“We’re going to need your help, your cooperation, and your trust,” he says. “But we will accomplish this soon—within two weeks at the most if all goes according to plan. We will save ourselves. We will prosper.”

Oliver’s smile widens beside me. The first citizen claps. Then another, then more and more rise, until the room fills with the noise, their controlled, rhythmic offering of thanks to the man who will save them from a terrible fate, but leave thousands of people to die. Their bodies press against me, so close I can’t breathe. They suffocate me.

Tears. My vision is still blurred, and I’m still shaking and trembling from fever. I don’t care if these people are subdued, if they can’t think for themselves. I’m sure at least a few of them still have some strength of mind. And I can’t believe them. I can’t believe any of them.

I stumble my way out of the pod. Oliver doesn’t stop me. I wish he would. I wish he would wake up and run after me, so I wouldn’t feel so alone.