Authors: Gregg Rosenblum
Cass shrugged. “Delivery driver. Or sanitation engineer, whatever that is.”
“Garbageman,” said Farryn.
Cass glared at Farryn. “Wonderful. Garbageman. Flock-drop duty the rest of my life.”
“Flock drop?” said Farryn.
“Never mind,” said Cass.
Amanda walked up to Lexi, frowning. “Why didn’t you tell me Cass was coming to school?” she said.
“Quiet,” said Lexi. “Keep it down.” She began walking, and Amanda, Cass, and Farryn followed. “I didn’t know until one o’clock in the morning,” she whispered. “But you can’t be all crashed out about it. At least not so loudly.”
“You’re not telling me anything anymore,” said Amanda. “Except when you need favors.”
Lexi shrugged. “Unusual circumstances.”
“Whatever,” said Amanda. “I have to get to second period.” She hurried away up a flight of stairs. Lexi watched her go and muttered, “Rust.”
“You’re welcome for the records hack, by the way,” said Farryn to Cass. “What are you doing in school, anyway?”
“Blending in,” said Cass. “Hiding out in the open.”
“Well, good luck with that,” said Farryn. “You’re hard not to notice.” He turned around and walked away.
Second period, Civics, passed uneventfully. It was another forty-five minutes of staring quietly at a video screen, learning about the governmental structure of the City and “the grand administrative partnership between robotic and biological intelligence.” It made Cass want to kick in the screen. But she kept quiet and passed the quiz. At least the class was bot-free.
The bell rang, and Cass felt a sudden surge of nerves—she was heading off to Physical Education, alone. What if she ran into the bot again? What if the teacher, or the other girls, questioned her story? Lexi told her what she needed to know—how to get to the locker room, where to find a uniform. “Just keep it quiet,” said Lexi. “You’ll be fine. Fourth period is lunch; I’ll meet you in the cafeteria.”
Cass made her way to the locker room. Five girls were inside chatting and changing. Their conversations cut off when she walked in. But then one of the kids, a tall brown-haired girl with a small diamond stud in her nostril, stuck out her hand. “New?” she said. “I’m Drea.”
Cass shook her hand. “Cass,” she said. “Hi.”
The other girls nodded but didn’t introduce themselves and quickly went back to their conversations. Cass found a uniform in a laundry pile in the back of the locker room—gray shorts and a white T-shirt marked
EAST CENTRAL
in blue letters. She changed quickly, away from the other girls, stashed Lexi’s dress in an empty locker, and headed out to the gym.
After a few minutes an old man with a whistle around his neck, carrying a small vid screen, walked up to the girls.
The teacher squinted at his screen. “New student!” he suddenly boomed. “Cassandra. Step forward!”
Cass stepped in front of the other girls. “It’s just Cass, actually, sir …”
“Says Cassandra,” he said, waving his screen and frowning at her. “So it’s Cassandra. And the name is Coach, not ‘sir.’ Back in line.”
Cass hesitated a moment, then stepped back into the group.
“Line sprints to warm up,” said Coach. “Line up!” Everyone moved to a white line back by the wall. “Last girl finishes in less than forty-five seconds, or the whole group starts over! You’re only as strong as your weakest link. Cassandra, pay attention and figure it out. Screw it up and the group starts over.” Coach tapped on his screen and blew his whistle.
The girls started running, and Cass scrambled to follow. She ran past the first line—she wasn’t expecting the group to stop at the line and run back—but she quickly picked up the pattern. Run to a line, touch it, run back. Run to the next line, do the same. She could have easily led—only two of the girls seemed to have any speed—but she paced herself and stayed in the middle of the pack. She finished, not even out of breath—it had felt great, actually, to finally move a bit—and watched as the slowest girl struggled to finish. She was alone at the far end of the gym, red-faced, and it was obvious she wasn’t an athlete by the way her limbs seemed to fly in every direction as she ran.
The girl finished, gasping, and Coach tapped on his screen. “Forty-eight seconds,” he said. “Line up! We’re doing it again. I’ll give you fifty seconds this time.” A few girls groaned, and one muttered, “Useless, Lisbet!”
“Sorry. I tried,” Lisbet said.
They ran again, and Lisbet again trailed but managed to make it across the line just under the time limit. She looked like she was going to pass out.
“All right, dodgeball!” said Coach. “Anyone beats Drea, they get to skip line sprints next time your group has P.E., which is …”—he consulted his vid screen—“in three days.” He limped over to a rack of red balls and began rolling them into the middle of the gym.
“How does this work?” Cass whispered to Lisbet, who was still breathing hard from the line sprints.
“Get hit by a ball and you’re out,” she said. “Catch a ball on the fly and the thrower is out. It hurts if you get hit in the face.”
The coach blew his whistle, and girls ran to grab the balls. Lisbet just stood still, covering her face with her forearms. Within a few seconds, a red ball nailed her in the stomach. She quickly walked off and sat down against the wall.
Cass saw a blur of red in her peripheral vision, and reflexively ducked. A ball buzzed over her head. She straightened up. A girl was standing a few feet away from her, holding another ball. She grinned and threw it at Cass. Cass flinched, but the girl actually had a weak arm, and Cass, protecting herself, easily caught the ball. The girl looked surprised, then shrugged and walked off to sit down next to Lisbet.
Cass knew the smart thing to do was to let herself get hit, to stay quiet and not stand out in any way. It would be easy to just sit down against the wall and wait for lunch. Instead she flung her ball at a nearby girl who wasn’t paying attention, nailing her in the hip and almost knocking her down. Cass did not lose on purpose. Period. She flung herself into the action.
It came down to Cass and Drea, the tall girl who had introduced herself in the locker room. Drea was obviously used to being the star athlete and seemed surprised when she whipped a ball at Cass and Cass easily slid to the side and avoided it. She threw another, even harder, this time at head level, and Cass ducked out of the way. Cass grinned. She might be half Drea’s size, but she was too fast for her—Drea wasn’t coming close to hitting her. Cass was totally focused on the moment—she wasn’t thinking about bots, or her parents, or her brothers, or anything at all other than avoiding the other girl’s throws and finding a way to hit her.
The game went on for a long time, neither girl able to get an advantage. And then, finally, Drea flung a ball, and instead of sliding out of the way Cass reached out and caught it. It stung her hands. She realized she had won, and she suddenly crashed back into herself—stuck in this strange school, in this horrible City, her parents and now her older brother captured and in re-education, her neck still sore from the piece of metal that drunken doctor had sewn into her. For the first time in weeks she had felt like her old self.
“Finally some competition,” said Drea appreciatively.
“Okay!” said Coach. “The new kid comes out of nowhere and beats the queen! I like that story. Cassandra, no line sprints for you next class. Ladies, hit the showers and get out of here.”
“Amazing,” said Lisbet, approaching her as she pushed her way into the locker room. “Nobody beats Drea at dodgeball. Where are you from?”
Cass hesitated. “I don’t know. It’s kind of fuzzy. I just got out of re-education.”
“Oh,” said Lisbet. “Oh, sorry, yeah, that’s tough … but sometimes it clears up, you know …”
Cass skipped the showers, quickly throwing on Lexi’s dress. She was feeling too conspicuous—her stupid performance during dodgeball certainly didn’t count as laying low.
“Yeah, well, I’ll see you,” said Cass. “Gotta run.” She ducked past Lisbet and hurried out.
THE ROOM FLARED FROM TOTAL DARKNESS TO HARSH BRIGHT LIGHT. THE door opened, and a Lecturer stepped inside. “Wake now,” it said. “Eat.” It pointed to the small table, which held a tray of food. “Dress. Use the lavatory. Your lessons will begin in fifteen minutes.” The bot stepped back into the hallway, and the door slid shut.
Nick struggled out of bed, stiff and cold. The sudden light hurt his new eye—he could see perfectly, but it did seem to be a bit more sensitive. He had no idea what time it was—it could be three in the morning or five in the afternoon, for all he could tell—and he didn’t know how long he had been allowed to sleep. It couldn’t have been more than a few hours. He was dead tired. A fresh jumpsuit had been left on the chair; he peeled off the one he wore and stepped into the new one. He sat down and numbly began eating the food—thin oatmeal, grayish pieces of some sort of meat, an apple, and water. He wasn’t particularly hungry, and the food was bland bordering on foul, but he had no idea when his next meal might come.
He tried to blank his mind and find calmness, but he thought about what he had accomplished so far, and the answer was—absolutely nothing. He had no idea if his parents were in the facility or even if they were alive. Even if he did run into his parents right now, he was completely at the mercy of the bots and had no plan for escape. Well, at the very least, he reminded himself, his brother and sister and Lexi and her parents were safer without him around. He thought about the fake chips and said a little prayer that Kevin and Cass were still okay.
The door opened, and a Lecturer stood in the hallway. “Come,” it said. Nick stood. The bot led him down the featureless hallway, and Nick again tried to pay attention to the turns and doorways. They approached the lecture room that had been used for Nick’s last lesson, but the bot continued past it. Nick grew curious and apprehensive. Where were they heading? What did the bots have in store for him now?
They entered a tiny room, which gave Nick a moment of claustrophobic panic that he pushed down. The bot tapped on a control panel, and the door slid shut. It felt like they moved up, but Nick wasn’t sure. An elevator, Nick realized. This was an elevator, moving between floors. The door opened, and the bot led Nick down yet another hallway that looked like all the others. The hall dead-ended in a doorway, which slid open, and Nick froze.
The room was filled with jumpsuited prisoners, sitting in rows on benches. There must have been thirty prisoners, ranging from about Kevin’s age to a bald elderly man probably in his seventies. Nick scanned the crowd, but his excitement quickly crashed … he didn’t see his parents. Gapper also was missing. He did see, however, the two girls he knew from lectures.
“Sit,” said the Lecturer. “Listen, and watch, and learn.”
Nick entered the room, made his way to a free spot between two women, and sat down, then stood right back up in shock. In the front of the room, on a small stage a few feet above the level of the benches, rested a metal table upon which another prisoner lay strapped. Nick almost cried out in surprise when he recognized the man. It was Tech Tom, from the Freepost. Tom stared up at the ceiling, clenching and unclenching his fists. He breathed heavily, and his cheeks were wet with tears.
Nick forced himself to sit. Nick’s Lecturer joined two others that already stood on the stage. It turned to face the prisoners. “Greetings, students,” it said. “We have gathered you today to witness a regrettable but, we hope, educational event.” It gestured at Tom. “Student 3002 has proven to be too intransigent to educate. He cannot, of course, be released into our community, and we cannot continue to waste our efforts. Today you will bear witness to Student 3002’s execution.”
Nick couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t feel his body. The bots were going to kill Tom?
“Our hope is that this student’s death will serve as a lesson to all of you,” the Lecturer continued. “Cooperation is vital to your success here, and this”—he again gestured at Tom—“will be the end result of a stubborn refusal to cooperate and learn.”
The bot turned to Tom. “Are you ready?”
“Go scrap yourself,” said Tom. He turned his head to face the audience, his eyes darting back and forth, and then he saw Nick, and his eyes opened wide. He began to struggle against the restraints.
Nick jumped to his feet and found himself pushing his way through the audience toward the stage. He had no plan; he just knew he had to get to Tom before the bots did.
His fellow prisoners cleared a path for him, and he was moving fast … “Hang on, Tom!” he yelled, the sound of his own voice surprising him.
He made it to the edge of the stage, and he gathered himself to leap at one of the Lecturers, and then he felt that horrible, familiar, brutal shock burn through his body. He fell hard, rigid with pain. A Lecturer leaned over him. The other prisoners pushed away from it and cleared a space. “Student 3054,” it said. “If you continue to act rashly and refuse to learn, you will eventually suffer the same fate as Student 3002.”
Nick couldn’t move or speak; his body was still spasming. He could feel a trickle of blood run down his cheek; he had bitten his tongue. From his position on the floor he was able to look up and see Tom, who was straining his neck to look over the side of the table. “Miles Winston!” Tom said. “Dr. Winston! He built the Consciousness! He’s the only one who might know how to stop them! He’s alive! Flock messages … another Freepost …”
The Lecturer quickly stepped forward and touched the table, and a needle rose up. Tom began to struggle against the restraints, but he could only move his head back and forth. He started to scream.
Nick wanted to scream along with him, but he still couldn’t find his voice. His arms and legs had stopped twitching, and he pushed himself slowly to his feet. The needle plunged into Tom’s arm and he shuddered, and his screaming abruptly stopped. Nick groaned and raised his fists and lurched toward the Lecturer. The bot casually lifted its arm and hit Nick in the face with a crackle of energy that sent him crashing down into blackness.