Numbers Game (5 page)

7

T
he first rays of morning light shone through the window. The traffic was just beginning to flow on the street below; I heard talking and the shifting of gears as people rode past. It was Rating Day for regular citizens, but it was also Assignment Day for graduates. Today we found out what our Ratings truly meant.

Which was why my plan had to begin immediately.

I dressed in my new purple uniform, straightening the stiff shoulder seams in the mirror and trying not to look at the glowing red number on my forehead. If my plan worked, it would be fixed before my assignment came. Hopefully.

With a quick jog downstairs, I gulped down my pill and asked to borrow my mom’s makeup. I only used it on special occasions. She stared at me, a strange look on her face. “Where are you going so early?”

“To meet Dresden,” I lied. “He wants to talk. I won’t be too long.” If she knew the real reason, she’d never let me go. I swallowed hard. Dresden hadn’t tried to contact me. A part of me was withering inside, the darkness of rejection spreading through my wounded heart. But there was still hope. If my plan worked, it could change everything. We still had a chance.

“All right.” Doubt shone in her eyes. “Good luck. Call me if you need me.”

“Sure, Mom.”

The late-spring heat was already stifling when I swung onto my bike. It was a grim omen of the type of summer to come—more water restrictions and more greenery regulations. Lanah wasn’t going to be happy. She loved her flower garden too much. She gave her allotted five plants some of her personal drinking water every day. I thought it was a little ridiculous, but she just said she missed the feel of real leaves. Whatever that meant.

It was fifteen minutes of hard riding before the Block came into view. It was a simple cube-shaped office building that housed most of the government officials in Olympus. My stepdad was summoned here on occasion for his job in Integration. I could only assume that the Rating Office was here as well.

After a few minutes I located a nearby bike rack and took a deep breath, smoothing my uniform. I wore no ornamentation, unlike the men and women who ascended the staircase and entered the building. They had bands of varying thicknesses and colors on their arms, and an older gentleman actually had multiple stars beneath his collar and a silver stripe across his chest. I squinted to see his face. The tribune himself, the empress’s personal assistant, here in Olympus. I’d never seen him in person before.

I hesitated. What I was about to do was risky enough, but the tribune was here, of all people. It could just as easily go bad as good, and I couldn’t afford to backslide any further. I watched the tribune disappear through the doors, surrounded by an entourage of guards and assistants. I could wait outside for a few hours, maybe, until he left.

No. I’ve spent my entire life doing what I’ve been told
.
It didn’t work out. Now it’s time to try the opposite.

The crowd was dissipating. I forced myself to take one step, then another. The doors loomed closer. At the last second I swooped my hair across my forehead, glad for the frizziness for the first time in my life, and strode inside.

No one noticed me at first. There were a dozen different hallways, but the entire crowd of people turned left when they reached the main hallway, all headed in the same direction like a school of identical fish. I felt odd stepping out of the crowd and into the massive center room.

This wasn’t my first visit. I’d been here once before as a child on a field trip. But the enormity and the grandeur of the room still took my breath away. A large dome in the center full of stained-glass pictures rose high overhead. The sun colored the glass so majestically that its rays shone down like pink spotlights. Glittery spots of dust made their way slowly down to the hard marble floor.

“Can I help you?” a voice asked.

I jumped. It was an older lady, silver roots peeking through her bleached blonde hair. She eyed my forehead with suspicion. I stood straighter, ready to plead my case.

The woman simply pointed overhead. “Visitors always stop and stare at the dome,” she said. “Easy to tell who should be here and who shouldn’t.”

“I’ve come to see my Rater,” I said quickly.

“Ah,” she said knowingly. “Come to file a complaint?”

So this was a common occurrence. A surge of courage welled up inside me. “Yes.”

“Do you know your Rater’s name?”

The woman was small, but her voice was sharp. She had probably worked here for decades, asking the same questions of dozens of grumpy graduates like me. “I know his initials. RMR.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Roulon. I should’ve guessed. I’ll take you to his office, but I doubt he’s there today. You can leave your complaint with his assistant.” Her legs carried her quickly away, and I had to jog to catch up.

“What happens if I file a complaint?” I asked.

“He looks at your data again. If he thinks there’s a discrepancy, he fixes it.”

“But if not?”

The woman turned a sharp corner, and I nearly ran into a soldier in a gray uniform in my effort to follow. I mumbled an apology, but he just stalked away. My guide didn’t look behind her as she spoke. “Then your Rating stands.”

“That’s it?”

She finally turned, her movement making me pull up hard. “NORA doesn’t make mistakes. Get that through your head while you’re young.” With a quick yank, the woman opened a heavy metal door and held it for me. “Good luck.”

To my surprise, the blond boy at the desk was only slightly older than me. Or maybe his freckles—a red mass of dots giving his face an orange hue—just made him look young. His eyebrows were reddish, which I guessed was his real hair color. The guy was bent over his work, arms moving frantically, knocking things over in his haste to tidy up.

A glass door behind him read “Rater Roulon.” A framed photograph hung beneath the name, depicting a round-faced man with dimples. So this was the man who’d held my future in his hands, then tossed it into the wastebasket like a bag of old parts. I stood on the tips of my toes to see through the glass, but the room was empty. Mr. Roulon wasn’t there.

The assistant finally looked up and rolled his eyes. “Of course. Today, of all days. Can you come back tomorrow?”

“No,” I said, straightening. “I need to—”

“File a complaint, yeah. I’m sure you do. Hold on a minute.”

With a final sweep of his arm, he wiped all the objects off his desk into a drawer. Then he punched something into the screen and grabbed my wrist, scanning the techband into the system. “Your name is . . . Ametrine Dowell.”

“Treena,” I corrected, feeling my determination drain away. This wasn’t going to work. I needed someone above the Rater to look at my case. My Rating needed to be fixed before my assignment was issued, or I’d be shipped off without options. Why had the Rater chosen today to be gone?

“And your Rating score is—Oh.” I pulled my hair aside to show him, and his eyes widened even more. Then I saw it—a small, nearly imperceptible downward turn of his mouth. Disgust.

“My scores are nearly perfect in every area,” I said, forcing down a shiver. His reaction was understandable, but still. “My Rating is a mistake.”

He turned to the screen again, his face suddenly closed and distant. “Even perfect scores wouldn’t guarantee anything. They don’t include the Rater’s overall impression points or the interview score.”

“Then
look
at my impression points and my interview score. I know you can’t tell me what I got, but just peek at them really quick.”

He sighed loudly, muttering something about a “high-profile job,” and his fingers flew across the glass screen. Then he squinted, a puzzled expression on his face. “Your impression score is fine. Your interview score too, actually. One of the highest scores I’ve seen.”

My heart skipped a beat. So there was a chance that this really was just a mistake, after all. He gave me a long look, and I simply shrugged.

He cleared his throat. “As a Rater’s assistant, I can’t change anything. The only thing I can do is make a note of your complaint. And, honestly,” he said, leaning forward, “I’ve been here two years and seen hundreds of complaints. The Rater never overturns a Rating once he’s signed it.”

I shook my head. “I can’t accept that.”

The guy made some notes on the glass screen, then stood up. I wished the screen were visible from this angle. “Your best bet is to fulfill your new assignment in a way that exceeds their expectations. That may actually get you somewhere.” He made sure the screen was powered off, then stepped around the desk. “Wish there was more I could do. Sorry.”

With that, the assistant made his way to the door and opened it for me. I had no choice but to leave. To my surprise, the guy followed me out. The door’s lock clicked behind us with chilling finality. He gave me a last look and headed down the hallway as if in a hurry to get somewhere. Sighing, I made sure my frizz securely covered my forehead once again.

Great. What now?

The assistant wasn’t the only one rushing away. The hallway was a mass of purple uniforms. Excited conversation buzzed in the air. As before, they all headed in the same direction.

Curious, I poked my head around the corner. The crowd was entering a set of double doors at the end of the hallway. Two guards stood on either side of the doors, their eyes sharp and probing.

“Excuse me,” I said, touching the elbow of a man passing near me. “What’s going on?”

The man looked surprised. “The empress’s visit, of course. Didn’t you get the network message?”

I felt my eyes widen. “I must have missed it. Thanks.” He was gone before I finished, pushing against the purple exodus that filled the hallway.

The empress? She was coming here? I’d never actually seen her in person, but every citizen knew what she looked like. I had studied her life story in history class, trying to figure out what she’d done to get the Rating that had propelled her to the throne at age eighteen.

A thrill of excitement surged through my veins as I forced an opening in the mass of people. A visit from the empress definitely explained the crowds and my Rater’s absence. He would be here somewhere, headed for the auditorium. I tried to remember what his photo had looked like, tried to hold it front and center in my mind. I wasn’t leaving this building without talking with him, empress or not.

“Ouch!” a woman cried. I had just stepped on her foot.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, but the pushing of the crowd didn’t allow me to do much else but follow. We inched our way closer, taking small steps and easing toward the double doors. The guards seemed alert, but they hadn’t stopped anyone yet. Of course, everyone else around me was a green. I pulled my hair forward again, hoping the lights were bright enough that the red glow wouldn’t shine though.

Right before stepping into the auditorium, one of the guards glanced at me. I looked away quickly, rubbing a fake headache, hoping he hadn’t looked too closely. The seats were nearly full, all facing a polished wooden platform on the stage. A dozen more guards surrounded the platform. The redness of my new Rating would be extremely noticeable when the lights dimmed so I had to be careful. I passed under a blast of cold air conditioning and shivered.

Keeping my hand up, I caught a glimpse of the Rater’s assistant slowly climbing the staircase to the left. Hoping the Rater would also be nearby, I followed, choosing a seat two rows behind him. It would only allow for a side view of the speaker, but it was the closest I could get to the front. A thrill of excitement shot through my body. I was about to see the empress in person.

Dresden will be so jealous, I thought with satisfaction.

I scanned the room for a few minutes, feeling my heart sink slowly to the floor. There were probably a thousand people in here, all greens, all blonde. It would be nearly impossible to find the Rater. A thousand people, I thought. It seemed strange. There couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred who worked in the government building. Maybe the higher officials of the area were here too. That meant my father was probably in the crowd as well. Slouching in my seat and keeping a hand over my forehead, I glanced at the rows behind me. No one looked familiar.

The guard who had watched me enter began climbing the steps on the far side, searching faces. My breathing quickened. I forced myself to sit normally as he turned and headed my direction. Twenty meters. Ten.