Extraction Page 2

  Logan gives me a crooked smile.

  Bodies bump me from behind. I force my eyes away from Logan and take the first step up the stairs. Clutching the rail, I focus on the red sun glinting on the surface of the hovercraft. With every step, I urge my legs not to shake so badly. I walk up these steps every morning on my way to school. I can pretend this morning is like every other morning; I can pretend everything is normal.

  I won’t look back at Logan. For days, I know he’s been worrying about what will happen if by some miracle luck is on my side today. If I win an escape that he lost last year.

  But I can’t worry about that yet. This test is my only shot.

  I won’t mess it up, no matter what.

  2

  The faint smell of coura dung and wet hay fills the departure craft. I pinch the bridge of my nose. It always smells like this—like us, the only passengers of this ship.

  The ship rumbles as we fly, sending vibrations through my already shaky body. I clutch one of the leather straps dangling from the ceiling so I won’t fall.

  There aren’t any windows except in the cockpit, but by now I can guess well enough when we leave the work camp behind and fly over the first of the forest trees. Lumberyards where some of the older kids work sit below us. The woods stretch for miles and miles. We zip through the sky above them at breakneck speed, but it feels like nothing at all.

  The hovercraft slows when we reach the Pavilion, the city that takes up the other half of the lone settlement on the Surface. Only adults live here, and they all come from the Core. Most aren’t permanent residents; they travel to the Surface for research—top secret, so I have no idea what it is. The ones who stay in the city awhile work as instructors in our school, or wardens and guards in the camp, or nurses and doctors in the sanitarium. Governor Preston oversees everyone, acting in place of the Developers.

  We settle with only a slight jolt on the landing platform atop one of the education buildings. The door opens, letting a gust of wind into the ship.

  I search for Grady as I move with everyone else out onto the platform. But I don’t see him. There are too many bodies. Their warmth does little to block the chilly air that seeps through my clothes.

  Officials lead us down a short set of steps, onto a narrow roof of black and silver panels with a rail that blocks us from either edge. Ahead lies a set of glass doors leading into the main education complex, which has a few more stories than ours. I come here every morning for four hours of memorizing scientific theories and mathematics, and learning about why our world is the way it is. Most of my knowledge will only be useful if I’m picked for Extraction.

  That’s why only half of all children in the outer sector camps are tested. When we’re born, doctors perform brain scans to determine how much Promise we have. Only those deemed worthy of possible transfer to the Core get to go to school and take the Extraction test. The rest are doomed for replacement.

  To my left, dark buildings rise from the streets, most towering over us and touching the clouds. Sometimes I picture myself standing on one of their rooftops and sticking my arms out. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and launch myself into the sky.

  And I fly.

  But even if I could fly, the towers are restricted for people like me. The only time we’re allowed to move through any part of the city beyond the education complex is during school tours or on the day of the yearly Extraction ceremony. Tomorrow.

  I glimpse the gravel road far below as we near the glass doors. A couple pods zoom by, whirring as they hurtle around street corners with giant CorpoBot screens that broadcast news from the Core, but are usually silent when I see them. The pods pass the oval-shaped sanitarium, where girls not much older than me give birth to babies they’ll never see. They pass the spot on the gravel where Laila broke down after pictures of the new Extractions appeared on the CorpoBots, and her face wasn’t shown.

  “Keep moving,” a guard says.

  I turn away from the road. The glass doors to the education complex are already open, and kids ahead of me are moving inside. A small part of me wants to stay out here on the roof, to run far away from this test.

  As long as I haven’t taken it yet, I still have a chance. I could still be one of the chosen.

  A guard stops me at the door. Even though it’s not just me, even though the officials are stopping everyone to check us in, my heart quakes like someone jabbed an electric socket inside it. He grabs my wrist, digs his nails into my skin—I hide my wince—and passes his scanner over my citizenship number: S68477. Green light pierces my eyes through the slits in his helmet.

  After a moment, he drops my arm and motions me along with a flick of his finger. My wrist throbs where he touched it. I keep my eyes trained on the floor as I move past him.

  Two lines are forming in the fifth-floor lobby, one for girls and one for boys. They stand beneath a low, black-paneled ceiling. Officials patrol the room’s perimeter, including the exit behind me and the entrance to the hallway ahead, where instructors wearing scarlet uniforms and knee-high boots stand waiting with smiles on their faces. Now I couldn’t run even if I wanted to.

  “Welcome to Extraction testing,” a female instructor says, her voice rich and deep. She’s darker-skinned than most and wears her ebony-colored hair in a sleek, high ponytail that falls halfway down her back. “We’ll see you one at a time.”

  Words clump and tangle in my mind as I join the girl’s line: It’s going to be okay; it’s just a test; I can pass this.

  But the test for Extraction is different every year. No one knows what to expect or how to prepare for it.

  I’ve done well in school. I got the highest score on my final exams for mathematics and quantum physics. My instructors have hinted several times that I’d make an excellent addition to the team of scientists in the Core.

  I’m not sure that’ll help me today.

  I stand in line waiting for my turn with a trembling hand wrapped around my still-fragile wrist. I recite the prime numbers from one to five hundred to stay calm.

  This year, one hundred and sixty-two sixteen-year-olds on the Surface are eligible for the test. Only the top ten will be picked for Extraction.

  When I reach the hallway entrance, the instructor with the high ponytail steps forward, carrying a tablet. I notice a small, golden moon pinned to the neck of her dress uniform. “What name do you go by?” she asks.

  The question catches me off guard. For years, adults have only referred to me by my citizenship number. “Um, Clementine.”

  Her eyes flicker to the scar along my right jawline. The reminder plastered on my skin of the night I met Laila. The night an official slammed the butt of his gun into my face.

  I’m used to the stares, but it still takes everything in me not to lower my eyes.

  “Follow me,” she says.

  Down the corridor and around several corners, she leads me through a door on the right.

  In the center of the bright, whitewashed room, three instructors stand gathered around a machine: a leather chair enclosed by a cage of metal strips, adorned with knobs and wires. The walls to my left and right are made of glass. Through them, I see identical rooms running along the corridor. Kids climb into the caged chairs, while others climb out. The ones inside don’t look quite right. Their bodies are almost seizing.

  My eyes widen.

  “This will help us determine how Promising you are,” my instructor says.

  No “it’s all right” or “it’ll be okay.” If she’d cooed in that weird way the nicer instructors do—as if they think they’re our parents, even though we don’t have parents—it’d be easier to trust her.

  But whether I trust her or not, I have to go through with this. This test might get me off the Surface.

  I set my jaw and climb into the chair. The instructors approach and place black straps over my arms and legs. They don’t tell me what they’re doing, but I feel them push small, mushy balls into my ears that block out everything but
my faster-than-usual heartbeat.

  I focus on the air flowing in and out of my nostrils, urging it to steady. I have to make a good impression.

  “I’d like you to try not to run,” my instructor says.

  Two pairs of hands place a lightweight silver helmet onto my head. It slides over my eyes, and the world goes black.

  *

  A soft hum fills my ears. The hum of the deflector shield in the sky.

  Wind tugs at my curls. Desert dirt lies beneath my feet, though I still feel the leather of the machine chair against my back.

  I breathe easy. This is a simulation. Whatever happens, it won’t be real.

  I spin in a slow circle, taking in my surroundings. I’m on the giant plateau that lies a mile west of the work camp. I can see the camp from here, with its sea of shacks on every street.

  In another direction, a dark building looms much too close to me. It can only be one place: the quarantine facility.

  I swallow hard and turn away. In the third direction, a row of figures stands in the distance. Children chained together. I hesitate before slowly walking closer to see them better. No one appears to be guarding them, but they aren’t moving.

  Maybe ten feet beyond them, the electric force field forms a hazy green barrier along the settlement perimeter. It runs from here all the way to the other side of the Pavilion, bordering the part of Kiel’s surface where we are allowed to go. Making escape on our own impossible.

  Beyond the force field and on the edge of the horizon floats the moon, a vast and terrible giant looming over our planet, Kiel. A pilot can reach the moon by ship in an hour if he’s a fast flier. Pink gas drips from its surface onto the deflector shield built to protect us after pollution ate away our ozone layer. The technical term for the moon’s lethal gas is letalith acid, but everyone, even the Developers, calls it moonshine.

  The whir in my ears falters and starts zapping.

  pew-pew

  A flicker runs all the way across my vision. For a second the shield fails, and I glimpse the true golden color of the moon.

  pew-pew

  I twist my lips into a frown.

  p-p-p-p-p-p

  The sky flickers everywhere now like lines on the CorpoBots in the Pavilion, when their signal cuts out.

  There’s a flash, and the shield vanishes from the sky.

  The moon sits on the edge of Kiel, a brilliant globe. Oozing pink acid.

  I can’t breathe anymore. I’m rock solid, and every inch of me is screaming, no, no, no, no, no, no.

  Heavy fog stretches toward the line of chained children. The force field doesn’t block the acid at all; it seeps right through.

  I’m shaking and breathing too fast. Let me out, please, let me out, I want to scream. This isn’t real, so I can’t die, but I can still feel pain—I’ll feel everything.

  Moonshine reaches the children. I almost yell at them. I almost run and try to pull them out of the acid’s way, even though they’re not real. But it’s too late.

  Their clothes sizzle and disintegrate. Their bodies contort in unnatural positions, like they’re burning insects instead of humans. Their mouths open in piercing screams—too many, too many—that make me want to fly out of my skin.

  The acid is almost to me now.

  I want to run. I want to be anywhere but here, even in quarantine, even staring at the muzzle of a rifle. Burning to death by acid is worse than any other kind of death.

  But my instructor said not to run.

  But I need to—I have to.

  But there’s no more time. The fog of moonshine clouds my vision. My face pulls away from my head like some hand is wrenching it. Then my hands and arms—everything. I burn like someone sliced me all over and drowned me in salt, and then set me on fire. The acid claws at my throat—I can’t breathe. I can’t think, and I sob and scream.

  Let me die, I plead. But I don’t die. Instead, I scream. Despite the fact that I don’t want to give the instructors the satisfaction of having brought me to this level. The pain is too much, so I keep screaming, and soon I can’t tell if it’s me anymore. If I’m even real. Somewhere in the hazy darkness of my mind, I remember this isn’t real. This is only part of a test.

  But I’m still on fire, and I can’t stop screaming.

  click

  The sickening feeling of acid corrosion zaps away like it was never there. The straps holding me down loosen and fall away. Hands lift the helmet off my head and remove the mesh things from my ears.

  I still clutch the arms of the chair, and my knuckles are plaster-white. My teeth might fall out, they’re so clenched.

  My instructor’s fingers fly across her tablet. She gives me a small, careful smile. “Great job, Clementine.”

  It takes me a second to understand what she means: I didn’t run in the simulation. I followed orders, which is what she wanted.

  This must’ve been a test of my obedience.

  I’m shaking as she helps me out of the chair.

  She snaps her fingers. “There’s one more thing, and you can go.”

  A second instructor approaches with a tray. A thick metal syringe sits upon it.

  My feet move to scramble backward, to run, before I can even stop them. If there’s one thing in this world I hate more than officials and their cam-bots, it’s needles. I don’t even know why, really. My fear stems from vague memories, from my earliest days in the sanitarium: A flash of a glinting needle. A flash of pain. A flash of a nurse leaning over me telling me to stop crying.

  But I force my feet not to run. I make myself stay put.

  I can’t run. This is still a test.

  My instructor observes me. She slips her fingers around the syringe and picks it up. “Why didn’t you run just now?” she says softly.

  Honestly, I don’t know. Officials use syringes like that on kids in the detention facility, to cripple them temporarily as punishment for their actions. Doctors use syringes to treat Unstables—people with ridiculously high Promise who fall off the deep end, whom the Developers want to fix. Needles scare the stars out of me.

  But this is a test of my obedience.

  “Because you didn’t want me to,” I say slowly.

  The approval in her eyes deepens, though her lips barely part when she smiles. “You know, this isn’t something that would hurt you.” She flicks the metal. “This is a special injection that Core citizens are given to raise their health and stamina—to ensure they survive to old age and their Promise remains high and stable. If you are picked for Extraction, you’ll receive it too.”

  I lick my chapped lips.

  “What would you give for a way off the Surface, Clementine?”

  Logan’s face slides into my head. The one person I know I’d miss if they took me away.

  Looking into my instructor’s shining eyes, I push his face to the back of my mind.

  “Everything,” I say.

  3

  I still remember the night Laila learned she wasn’t picked for Extraction. Logan and I stood in the crowd outside the building where the choosing takes place, watching the pictures appear one by one on the CorpoBot screens. Watching as the pictures switched to a video of the new Extractions shaking hands with the governor, relief in their eyes and smiles on their faces. Laila wasn’t one of them.

  Her body shook with sobs all night. Her cries kept me awake.

  “I don’t wanna do this anymore,” she said. “They’re gonna make me have babies, and steal them away before I can even see their faces. Why can’t they just kill me now?”

  My eyes stung and I clenched my hands into fists. It felt like the sky was falling on the two of us and we had no cover. Nothing I said would calm her down.

  “Can’t you just kill me, Clementine?” she said.

  She came up with a plan. She’d break into a greenhouse and steal one of the shovels. She wanted me to smash the back of her head in.

  “No, no, you can’t,” I said, really sobbing now, really choking. “Please
don’t leave me. You’re my family.”

  Family. A word with three syllables that the instructors had defined in school. Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers.

  People who loved each other.

  Laila didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she sighed and pulled me onto her lap. I wrapped my arms around her neck, burying my face in her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I won’t leave you yet.”

  “You can still try to convince them you’re Promising,” I said. “Please try. They might still make an exception.”

  She didn’t answer for a moment. I knew what she was thinking: The Developers don’t make exceptions.

  But she didn’t say that out loud. Instead, she planted a soft kiss in my hair. “Okay, I’ll try,” she said. “I’ll keep up my Promise. Maybe I’ll even try to escape the settlement if I get brave enough. There’s gotta be a way, right?”

  “I hope so,” I whispered.

  But she never did get brave enough.

  *

  The field grass is still wet from yesterday’s rain. It muddies Laila’s old boots with every step.

  I’m walking with a group of sixteen-year-olds, led by two officials and a cam-bot. A hov-pod transported us to the fields near the work camp after the test. We never get a day off work because there is always work to do. Today is no different.

  “Did you run?” a girl beside me whispers to a boy. She fidgets and glances at the official, probably to make sure he can’t hear her.

  “When?” the boy asks.

  “During the test.”

  He doesn’t answer—we aren’t supposed to discuss the test at all. But his cheeks flush red. He must have run.

  “It’s okay.” The girl squeezes his hand. “So did I.”

  “I didn’t,” a voice to my left says. The girl who speaks has blond hair and a face that would be beautiful, if it weren’t covered with dust and bruises. I’ve seen her in school, but we’ve never spoken.

  “The instructor said not to, so I didn’t,” she says. “I didn’t even scream.”

  The other girl narrows her eyes. “No one asked you, Ariadne.”

  The blonde, Ariadne, wraps an arm tightly around her body and stares at her bare feet in the grass.