Ash (2 page)

“Absolutely,” I said.

“It’s ultra, Dax. Really,” she said, grabbing me in a quick hug. As she released me, the bell began to toll. We looked in unison up at the clock tower. You could see it from most of the rings. All, in fact, but the one Laira came from. And the one where I would wind up eventually—the Ash ring. But that hardly mattered right now. It was two o’clock, and Laira’s time stamp was scheduled for 2:03.

“Ready for this?” I asked her.

“Oh, please,” a priggish voice answered instead. It belonged to a tiny slip of a Purple named Portia. What she lacked in size she more than made up for with an extra large mean streak. “This is such a waste of time. We shouldn’t have to watch a bottom feeder do some mundane task. Especially some charity case the school thrust on us.”

I whirled around to face her. I might have been at the bottom of the color rings, but it didn’t mean I had to sit idly by while she flung insults at Laira. I clenched my fists at my side and took a step. Which is when I caught the eyes of the closest Destiny Keeper and stopped. I wasn’t insane—no matter what people said. Still, just because I couldn’t pound some sense into Portia, didn’t mean I couldn’t tell her off. I opened my mouth to speak, but Madden Sumner beat me to it.

“Portia, enough,” she chided her friend.

Everyone immediately grew quiet. Madden was destined to be a future Minister of the Seven, one of the country’s top commanders, but for now simply held court as our school’s resident royalty. And one of my least favorite people. “Laira has a right to be excited,” Madden continued. “It
is
her Destiny Day, and Ash destinies have their function, too. After all, even the smallest destinies have
some
meaning.”

She gave Laira a condescending, close-mouthed smile and flipped her chestnut hair over one shoulder with a clattering of her bracelets. She wore seven bangles to represent each of the rings. They stacked in descending order—purple, crimson, green, yellow, brown, slate, ash. She was the only person I knew who was allowed to wear all of the colors at once. It would have been a nice symbol of harmony if I thought she meant it.

I rolled my eyes, turning back to Laira to resume my pep talk. I stopped when I noticed her expression. She looked determined, like she was on a mission, and she was nodding her head at Madden’s words. She had actually taken them as a compliment.

For reasons I hadn’t been able to grasp, Laira worshipped Madden, and was able to delude herself into thinking the future minister actually cared. But I knew the truth. I’d gotten a behind the scenes look at Madden when she’d dated my brother, Link. Still, I wasn’t about to get into that with Laira. Not now. Not when she was about to fulfill her destiny.

I watched as the hands on the clock tower moved to the three-minute mark.

“It’s time,” Laira said, taking a deep breath and placing her foot onto the road.

“Good luck!” I called as she took another tentative step, her eyes moving from me to the crowd to the clock tower. She had to make it fully across before 2:04 hit, but she didn’t want to rush the moment either. You only get one destiny. Well, most people anyway.

The street in front of Spectrum circled around the school sharply. Laira had made it about halfway across the road when I heard the unmistakable purr of an engine. At first I didn’t register the sound. Cars weren’t that common. Besides, the Destiny Keepers had cordoned off the streets, so the sound of an approaching vehicle was odd enough that I simply blocked it out.

But then I saw it. A white government-issued van racing around the bend.

Everyone stood frozen, almost transfixed. The upper rings were silent. The Destiny Keepers were silent. Laira was silent. She stood paralyzed in the middle of the street.

My voice shattered the quiet. “Laira, move!”

The van fishtailed over the pavement in a shriek of squealing tires. Laira was still frozen as it hurtled toward her, each second bringing it closer and closer to impact.

There was nothing I could do. I was too far away.

“Jump!” I screamed.

T
he van barreled straight for the Ash. I knew I should close my eyes, I didn’t want to see this, but I couldn’t turn away. Why wasn’t she moving? Dax Harris was screaming for her to run, but Laira didn’t budge. I braced myself. She was going to get hit.

With a fraction of a second to spare, Laira came to life and lunged out of the way. The van made a sharp turn in the opposite direction, the wheels squealing against the pavement. It skidded out of control, skipping over a curb and slamming into a bench on the side of the road with a loud crunch of metal. Smoke leaked from the front.

Laira reached the opposite side of the road right as the clock tower hit 2:04. I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d been annoyed when the school had required us to watch an Ash destiny take place—we had Keepers for that—but I was glad to see her succeed. It was imperative to our society that no one strayed from their calling. We couldn’t afford another Event. I shuddered to think about the problems that could develop if anyone failed to meet their destiny.
But Laira made it
, I reminded myself, and turned my focus back to my classmates.

There was a mad rush of chatter. One of my best friends, Portia, clutched at my hand. Her porcelain doll’s mouth was puckered into a perfect O as she waved toward the crashed car. “Did you see that?” she asked, her eyes glued on the vehicle.

“Of course she saw it,” my other friend, Lavendar, answered for me. She crossed one arm over the other. The amethysts on her fingers sparkled in the afternoon sunlight against her dark skin. “We all saw it. That PAE van practically ran down the Ash.”

“Do you think the driver’s okay?” someone nearby asked.

The driver. I looked over at the vehicle. A worrying billow of smoke continued to drift up from the hood. Was it possible I knew him? My father was head of national security. He worked with the Preventing Another Event division, or PAE, all the time. I’d met many of the officers when stopping by the UV building to see him over the years. “I don’t know,” another voice answered. “That was a pretty bad crash.”

I stood straighter, making sure to appear calm and composed. My training prepared me for this. After all, I was a future Minister of the Seven. My duty was to lead. “Everyone just stay where you are,” I said, trying to keep the concern from my voice. “I’ll go check out the situation.”

I strode over to the Destiny Keeper closest to me, careful to walk not run. He was all muscle, with a stocky frame that reminded me of a tree trunk. “How is the driver?”

“Seems okay,” he said, to my relief. “One of my men is with him now. He’s…”

“Excuse me,” Dax Harris interrupted. She hurried toward us with her Ash friend in tow. The girl was shaking. “What happened?” Dax demanded. “Laira was almost killed. Weren’t there blockades? Something?”

“Watch yourself,” he replied, the warning clear in his tone.

I looked at Dax in disbelief. Was she seriously questioning if the Keepers did their jobs? There was a reason they were nicknamed Removers. And no one in their right mind mouthed off to them, especially not someone of Dax’s standing. But that was the thing about my ex-boyfriend’s little sister. She never had any sense of boundaries or social grace.

“We’re just trying to understand how something like this could take place. No disrespect meant, sir,” she said. I could tell she didn’t mean it, but apparently she fooled the Keeper, because he humored her.

“The street was blocked off,” the Keeper continued. “I don’t know how the van made it through.”

Dax glanced at the still smoking wreck, and seemed taken aback, almost as if she was noticing it for the first time. “Is the driver okay?”

“As I was telling Ms. Sumner, he appears to be uninjured. Perhaps his involvement was part of the girl’s destiny.”

“Do you think I could have triggered something?” Laira asked.

The Keeper shrugged and Laira’s eyes widened. “I knew I had a bigger purpose than just crossing the street,” she said in excitement. “If this turns out to be something, maybe I can petition to get moved up a ring. How ultra would that be?”

I stifled a groan. A man was possibly injured in a crash and this was what she cared about? She didn’t belong anywhere higher than Ash. Not that she would get the chance. Having your color designation changed was extremely rare. A quorum of Destiny Specialists, on the advice of a Keeper, had to decide that the person’s destiny triggered something so big that they deserved to be raised a rung. It only happened about once every five years. The only other way to switch rings was to give birth to a child with a destiny above your own ring, like my parents did. But that also rarely happened. In fact, other than my family and Dax Harris’s, I couldn’t name any.

“Maybe you could help me with the status change request?” Laira continued, badgering the Keeper. “You did monitor my destiny and the crash.”

This was really too much. I attended Spectrum to learn ring appreciation, but after all my years here, it only reaffirmed what the government said—rings were in place for a reason. Ashes would be best served by remaining with other Ashes. Laira’s exposure to Purples had given her delusions of grandeur, rather than focusing on what mattered—her successful contribution to society as a whole. It was a disappointing lesson on ring relations. Still, there were more important matters to tend to right now.

I’m going to go check on everything, okay?” I half asked, half told the Keeper.

“Of course,” he said, and I left him to deal with the Ashes alone. The second Keeper stood next to the van. He was a long, lanky man, and he moved to the side as I approached. His purple uniform was perfectly creased, his black boots shined. “Don’t worry, Miss Sumner. He’s fine. His van may need some work, but it looks mostly cosmetic. I think it’ll run.”

I peered in at the driver. I didn’t recognize him, but that wasn’t too surprising. He was older than me by several years. Dark, curly hair framed his face, and the beginnings of a beard shadowed his jaw. It struck me as odd. The PAE had strict codes. Cropped hair, clean shaven. Maybe he had been on special assignment.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

He smiled back. “I’m just fine. A little embarrassed, I guess. The Keeper was telling me I interrupted a destiny in progress. I somehow missed the signs. A lot on my mind. What with the loop championship today.” He laughed a loud, booming laugh. “Speaking of which, I should really get moving. I’m supposed to be meeting some friends to head over to the stadium together.”

There was something about his speech that sounded forced and I paused, looking at him harder. “How long have you been driving for the PAE?” I asked.

“Not too long,” he said. “Just a few months.”

I was probably being paranoid, but I asked another question to make sure. “Is Robin still managing the office over there?”

“You know it,” the man said, shaking his head and smiling.

“How’s he doing?” I asked, my body tensing.

“He’s as good as ever.”

A wave of nervous energy pulsed through me. “Robin’s a woman,” I said. “And she retired last month.” I wasn’t paranoid. I was right. This man wasn’t who he said he was.

His loud laugh boomed from the van again. “I’m just a little mixed up from the crash.”

A bead of sweat trickled down his temple, and he reached up to wipe it off, displaying the band that circled his left wrist. Only I could see that it was a retired model. The shape of this man’s tracker was a perfect square, rather that the rounded corners that had been part of the last hardware update. I stepped back from the van.

“He’s not wearing a proper tracker,” I told the Keeper. “He’s not PAE. He’s probably not even a Purple.”

The Keeper snapped to attention, immediately pulling his stun stick from his belt. The small wand crackled to life. “Miss Sumner, please return to the lawn. Sir, step out of the vehicle. Slowly.”

I did as instructed, but the driver didn’t. He shot out of the van and went straight for the Keeper’s throat. But he only ended up with a blow to the side of the head for his efforts. The Keeper had been ready with his stun stick. He quickly cuffed the man, while his broader partner opened the back of the van. He glanced inside and immediately slammed the doors shut. I couldn’t get a look, but it had to be something important, because he promptly tapped a message into his tracker. Moments later two additional PAE vehicles screeched into the scene. A woman stepped out of the first, got into the wrecked van, and drove off.