Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1) (15 page)

“Not charging the logger?” he asks pointlessly. He knows the answer as well as I do.  “She’s logged you six times in the last three days. When she logs, you need to respond.  She’s your facilitator. Everything you do from now until Assimilation is over is going to be reported to the Tribunal. Ignoring your facilitator is begging for Disposal.”

“Lyder said this was my grieving time. I’m not allowed to grieve in peace?” I toss back at him. I’ve never seen him like this, so agitated. His eyes are hard now. A fresh crack opens in my already ruined heart. I’ve gone too far.

“Grieve, yes. Destroy yourself, and Ritter, too, no.”

Of course. This isn’t about me. It’s about his brother. I should have known.

He waits.  I stare at the MedQuick. My enemy.

“I received a very disturbing emergency alert about you today. You’re not eating. You’re not taking the prescribed solutions. You’ve lost 21.8 pounds since your first ScanX breath analysis. You’re malnourished, you’re depressed, and you haven’t been sleeping well.  You were directed to come see me today, and you ignored that, too.”

Tattletale,
I think, narrowing my eyes at the machine, watching Strega summon my breathing tube.

My dislike of both machines ratchets up another level.

I breathe into the tube mostly because my thoughts are too slow, too murky to formulate another plan. My head feels cottony, my limbs weighted with concrete. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth and the room won’t stop lazily spinning.

Wordlessly, Strega glances at the four tubes that burp out of the MedQuick. He reads the first one and holds it out to me. When I make no move to take it, he actually lifts my hand and shoves the tube against my palm, growling, “Vitamins. Take them.”

I shake my head.

“Take them.”

I don’t move.

“If you don’t swallow them in the next three seconds, I’m going to hold you down and force them down your throat. You want that?” He meets my eyes in the mirror, glowering. He’s serious. He’ll do it.

No.
The word stubbornly persists even though I don’t say it. His jaw clenches.  I smile and fold my arms across my chest.

“I’m not kidding around, Davinney. Don’t make me prove it,” he warns.

“And violate the abuse standard?” I smile wider at the flash of pain in his eyes. They turn to ice so quickly I might have imagined it.

He kicks my legs out from under me with a quick swipe of his foot. His right hand cups the back of my head so that I smack my skull on his flesh rather than the floor. There’s nothing gentle about the rest of him, though, as he pins me with his body. Propping himself on his elbow, he plucks the vitamin tube out of my hand and pulls the stopper out.

“It’s not abuse if it’s a medical intervention,” he replies. “You’ll feel so much better if you just take it. Why fight it?”

I don’t answer. If I don’t open my mouth, he can’t dump the vitamin goop into it.  I feel a stinging, though, in my arm. Strega smirks down at me with no small measure of satisfaction.

“So busy watching that tube you didn’t notice the needle, did you?”

Fury wells up in me at his trick. I kick him hard, pleased by the grunting sound he makes and at the fleeting look of surprise before he adjusts his body so that he’s pinning my legs now, too.

“Ritter says you have a vendetta against the ScanX. Now the MedQuick, apparently. Why?”

“Because maybe I don’t want to be reduced to a pile of chemicals!” I spit the words out at him. “I’m a person, Strega!  Maybe I want to
feel
my feelings, not medicate them away!”  I struggle uselessly against his hold. I wonder what else he gave me. Everything feels even slower. Heavier. That can’t be just vitamins.

He’s uncorked the next tube, but he doesn’t try to force it past my pursed lips. His eyes are his eyes again. Gentle. Helpless, now, too.

“Your...” he searches for a word, “personhood isn’t at stake here.  No one is asking you not to feel.  These solutions only exist so that you can be the best version of yourself.” He’s nearly whispering. “But always, Davinney, always still yourself.”

And that’s the essential disconnect, the thing that neither Ritter nor Strega understands.  They’ve always known these devices with their food lists and potions.  They can’t understand that right or wrong, better or worse, I’d rather be one hundred percent
myself. 
The idea that a product from outside is the only thing that can make me whole is frightening to me, because it means I can’t make myself whole without it, that I’m lacking. Deficient. Vulnerable.

“Nothing in those tubes will get me home. What’s the point?” I ask hollowly. My eyes are dry. I’m too dehydrated to spare the moisture.

There’s no winning this argument. Strega will not let me up off the floor until I medicate myself.  He doesn’t see that I am about to give in to him, for he squeezes my jaw in one hand, the tube also clutched there. He pinches my nose shut with the other. His low growl forces my mouth open as much as his cutting off my air supply does.

“You will
not
be the cause of a Disposal. Not Ritter’s, and not your own.”

The contents of the next tube, which he hasn’t explained to me, burn like one hundred proof moonshine. I choke and gasp so pitifully that Strega lets me up.  I ignore his words, but the tube must have held some super powerful stuff. Almost instantly I reel backward. Strega cups my head again. His face blurs as something sucks me down, down, and he whispers,

“I won’t let you fail.”

Fail
, my brain echoes. Not fall.

I wake feeling almost hungover. So much for Strega’s medical magic. Irritation and guilt clash as I discover Strega sleeping on the floor next to the rift.  When I start to go out the other side, I see Ritter is blocking me in there, so I slide to the end and tiptoe out of the unit.

I don’t want to admit Strega is right. I feel better this morning. I don’t want to. It’s like by feeling better, I’m walking away from the possibility of finding that underground passage home.  But the desire for home hasn’t weakened at all. Only the apathy about my fate here on Concordia. I’m ready to try again.

I’m afraid of the Disposal again, afraid for Ritter. I hadn’t known Lyder would log me. I thought I’d only been avoiding Mina and Melayne.

I scoop up the charged logger and send a reply log to Lyder.  Her response is nearly instantaneous.

“You will follow up with Strega Bocek today, and his report will be added to your factors.  Do not disregard a log in the future. You are on thin ice.”

Reading those words, I feel as though I’ve fallen on my face on that ice, cold seeping into my bones. Ominous cracking sounds fill my imagination.

I’m an idiot.

I’m eating the hearty breakfast I should have taken more seriously yesterday when Strega wanders into the room.  His eyes are wary.  He’s quiet. He watches me carefully for a few minutes. I watch back, still feeling strange about the events of the night before. Indignant. Self-righteous.

Ashamed.

When I look up at the meldway again, he’s gone. I lose my appetite again. This is hard. Harder than I ever could have imagined. Before the Tribunal, there was still the delusion that the outcome wasn’t decided yet to get me through the day. Now there’s only medicine and food and the hope that I might be able to find my nightshade carrot somewhere beyond the reach of the Tribunal, if there is such a place.

Strega eats, but I don’t miss the glances he sends my way. Or, really, my plate’s way. I try to oblige him with a forkful or two, but after not eating for so long I’m starting to feel full. And it still tastes like cardboard.

I wonder if he’s ever going to look at me the same way again, with quiet interest, with concern that felt like more than just a functional concern. He’s not looking at me that way now. Now, it’s all caretaker. 

Because I fear his next words to me will only prove that, I speak first.

“Lyder says I have to follow up with you today, whatever that means.”

“It means,” he swallows and wipes his mouth, “you will come with me to holding for a more thorough examination.”

“What more is there?” I ask, putting my fork down. “Isn’t breath analysis all there is?”

“There are more comprehensive levels of breath analysis,” he says, “but there are other measures as well.”

“But can’t we just do that here, on the MedQuick?”

He shakes his head. “This is also your Assimilation onboarding examination.”

“My what?”

“You didn’t look through the portfolio you were given?” he huffs.

I shrug. “I skimmed it.”

He sighs.  “All Assimilation candidates have to arrive on day one with their assessment results. You’ll be testing in many ways today, not just physically.”

“What does a caretaker have to do with tests that aren’t just physical?”

“I oversee the physical and mental health tests. Then you will take the slides to the proving grounds and carry out the rest of your testing there.”

“Proving grounds?” My heart hammers in my chest at the ominous implication of those words. The word smacks of military to me. Of preparations for war.  I think about Mina again, about Ollie’s words to her.  I think about the launch closures. I think about the suicides. 

It is Strega’s turn to shrug. “They have the right equipment for the testing.”

Whether he’s watching or not, I can’t eat another bite. I take my plate to the servette just as Ritter skids into the room and hastily puffs into his tube.

“I’m going to be late,” he panics. “I’m already down a level of function.  I can’t lose another!”

I flash on the suicides. My throat closes. “What level are you, Ritter?”

He sees my face and is instantly contrite. “Not that low,” he assures me quickly, grabbing the fruit and yogurt he’s chosen and stuffing them in his messenger bag. He hastily swipes my forehead. “Good luck today,” he says, dashing into the meld hall before I can swipe back. “Bye, Strega!” he calls, and then he’s out the meld and no doubt running for the slide.

Even if I wanted to spend another day floating aimlessly on my rift, there’s no time. It is two days until I’m to meet Lyder for Assimilation, Day One. Today will be taken up with testing, or as Concordia calls it, pre-factoring.  I’ve promised Strega I will spend tomorrow going through the portfolio.

In holding, Strega sticks patches to me like we have in hospitals at home. They measure my heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation levels.  I breathe into the BAU, and he sighs.

“These could have been much better,” he mutters darkly, reviewing the projection on the glass wall.

They could have been better if I had taken care of myself, he means.  Again, I feel the odd mixture of indignation and guilt.

He has me run on a belt built right into the floor. I am out of breath too quickly. He’s unhappy with me. He tests my flexibility, and I do well there, but he’s right back to displeasure when he tests my weight bearing skills and balance. I’m a klutz and a weakling by Concordia standards, even though I was always average among my peers at home.

I worry about the next part, the mental health exam, because I think he’s going to ask me things I’d rather not answer.  Instead, all he does is take out the little fingertip disks and holds them against my temples. Like always, my mind seems to settle and clear when he does it.

He slips the disks into his pocket and pulls a small flat box out of the waist apron he’s wearing today.

“What are those?” I ask, seeing that there are three more sets of disks of varying size in the box.

He pulls the first set of disks out of his pockets again. “Remember the alpha inducers?”

“Yeah.”

He drops them back into his pockets. “Well, this set of disks stimulates other areas of the brain to test general neurological function, specific reflexes, and a variety of behavioral responses.” Gesturing to the rift, he says, “Lie down, please.”

I do as he says.

“You might feel a little dizzy,” he warns.

A little dizzy? The world spins viciously until I almost lose my hearty breakfast.

“Ok,” he soothes, “we’re done with that. Now you might feel a little shaky.”

He is the king of understatements. Every limb, every part of me down to my eyelids suddenly jitters and jumps.

He waits for me to catch my breath.  Tears spring to my eyes as he readies another set. I don’t know whether I am still shaking from the last test or from anticipation of the next.

“We’re almost finished,” he assures me. His fingers bypass the final set of disks. Instead, he fishes out and applies the alpha inducers. Relief courses through me.  Even if I suspect that the next set will only rile me up again in some way or another, I’m feeling centered again.

I wish he’d warned me about the final set of disks.  At first when he places them against my temples, I feel nothing. But then he says,

“It will be easier if you just accept whatever happens.”

I don’t have long to wonder what he means before suddenly I’m standing alone in the Tribunal’s white death room.