Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1) (25 page)

I think of Kate again. Maybe I’m channeling my anger at Strega into grief for her, or maybe I’m making the memory of her out to be more of a friend than she was, but I cry for her for the first time since Lyder told me she’d vanished. Melayne and Mina are just a log away, but I’m afraid to reach out to either one. It kills me that I don’t know if they can be trusted.

Though I know it’s the easy way out, it’s perfectly legal to breathe into the MedQuick, to bring it my turmoil, and to accept the moodleveler and sleepbringer it offers. The sun is still shining as I sink onto my rift, steadfastly ignoring the voice in my head, shouting that I’m a hypocrite.

In the days that follow, Strega and Ritter are polite but cool toward each other and toward me.  Strega doesn’t apologize to me, and I do not apologize to him. I don’t feel I owe him an apology. He was the one to imply that I should lead Ritter on, after all.

Attero Davinney might have used that painful blow to stop trying again, to ignore the ScanX and the MedQuick and wind up half-starved and zombie-like. Attero Davinney even whispers to me that doing so might get Strega to have more than just a caretaker’s concern for me again. But I am not that Davinney.  I am warrior Davinney, blank faced and unaffected. Or at least outwardly so. And just a small part of warrior Davinney is afraid that Strega won’t, in fact, ever care about her like that again.

I go along with Strega’s apparent decision to revert our relationship to that of caretaker and ward. Though my heart makes no progress toward rebuilding as the days pass and the end of Assimilation creeps closer, I soldier on as if that decision were my own.

Ritter busies himself during his long, function free days by taking up various body mastery classes. He hikes and learns to shoot. Less than a week after he sees me kissing Strega, he takes off with a group on a short trip into the Outer Territory, out beyond the reach of the slides, away from the ease of the ScanX and the MedQuick, and camps for several days.

Strega no longer stops by the keeping unless he can see visible damage when he logs me. The MedQuick will suffice for anything less. Only three days after Ritter takes off on the trip to the Outer Territory, I’m going crazy. After just three days of having the keeping all to myself and talking to no one, I pull out my logger.

“Strega, would you please come over?”

“Are you hurt?” The genuine concern in his voice stings so bad I have to clench my jaw. Because I’m doing that, I can’t answer right away, and he grows more concerned.
My Strega,
I think, dropping the logger the moment he says, “I’m on my way.”

There’s no hiding the fact that I’ve been crying. Nothing the MedQuick can dispense will hide the evidence quickly enough that Strega won’t see. Instead, when he arrives at the keeping, he realizes at once that it is nothing medical. The fact that he remains motionless in the short hallway rather than approach me brings on a fresh wave of tears that no amount of blankness on my part can stop.

Finally,
finally,
he’s Strega again, crossing the room in two quick strides, enveloping me in his arms, making no move to grab those little disks that could calm me in an instant. He says nothing, just holds me and lets me talk.

“Strega,” my voice muffles out from his shoulder, “please don’t shut me out.  I can’t do this. Ritter’s gone, and you’re gone, and I’m afraid to talk to Mina or Melayne because they’re both involved with guardians. I don’t know whose side they’re on, and there’s no one else…”  That sounds horrible, like I
only
want him because there’s no one else. But that’s not what I mean and that’s not how he takes it.

Finally,
finally,
he kisses me. Slowly at first. Timidly, even. But soon everything is poured into that kiss. Desperation. Longing. Loneliness. Fear. Regret. Desire.

When I am left breathless, my forehead on his chest, he speaks.

“I don’t know how to love you without hurting Ritter,” he admits.

“I know,” I say, idly running my fingers over his solid shoulders.

“And I don’t know how not to love you,” he adds huskily.

More tears sting my eyes, but these are happy tears. Relieved tears. “I don’t want to hurt him, either,” I say. “But I’m not Linney. I just look a little bit like her.”

“A little,” he breathes a laugh against my neck. It’s not funny, but he’s relieved, too. In all of this chaos, there’s joy in each other. I’ll try to hide it if he asks, but I hope he doesn’t.

I kiss him until he’s no longer satisfied with kissing, until his hands begin to wander across my back, then down to my hips, with clear intent. It’s funny to me that his hands sliding over the curves and planes of my body make me aware, suddenly, of how slender and firm I’ve become.

My skin is still soft. Strega tells me so as he whispers in my ear. But through him I see where I’ve lost a fair portion of the squishy fat over my abdomen. It no longer rounds out as much as it used to. He traces my ribs, and I realize if I concentrate, I can feel them one by one, no longer invisible to the touch. I’m by no means emaciated. I’m not like a waifish supermodel with jutting clavicles or sharp hip bones. You can’t count my vertebrae or count the ridges of my sternum. But my body has changed, and Strega’s hands smoothing over it introduce it to me.

I wonder if it’s the same for him, if my curious hands over his shoulders, across his handsomely ridged belly, up along his biceps and shoulders, show Strega himself.

Movement at the corner of my eye freezes my hands. Strega turns with a stricken look on his face. Neither of us expect to see guardians streaming into the keeping. Not now. Not yet.

They usher us out onto the lawn. It is just as unnerving watching them trail in and out of Ritter’s as it was Melayne’s. More so, even, because Ritter has been doing searches on the scape that could easily be misinterpreted.

Keeping my face blank is almost impossible. Strega’s hand rests tightly in mine. He doesn’t know he’s squeezing too hard. I’d love to dig the alpha inducers out of his pockets right about now, but I won’t do anything that might make either of us look like we have something to hide.

The guardians have not, to my knowledge, questioned any of their targets, so there have been no BAUs produced to test the veracity of answers. I don’t know whether to be relieved that Ritter isn’t here for this or whether it’s worse.

I nearly lose my composure at this thought, so I force my focus onto Strega’s tight grip. I don’t question my love for him. I have mastered accelerated relationships, after all.  But I marvel at the possibility that he really does love me, that he’s not just experiencing a crush. The word crush is too childish for this place, these circumstances. For him.

These are the ridiculous thoughts I’m having as the guardians filter in and out of the meld. That and fleeting sarcasm:
How many guardians does it take to search one keeping?

Just like at Melayne’s, they seize our loggers and face them toward their own, copying our transmission histories, files, photos, codes, everything. I know mine holds nothing incriminating, and I’m even more certain about Strega’s.

This time, the guardians don’t storm the keeping next door. They move off down the block, however, to another keeping several melds down. Like with Mina and Melayne, Strega and I stand out on the lawn for several minutes.

His grip hasn’t loosened. His whole body, in fact, is quite rigid. He’s staring blankly ahead, only blinking.

“Strega?” I ask, shaking our joined hands a little.

He glances down at me.

“They’re gone,” I say. “It’s okay.”

He swallows.

“Let’s go inside,” I say, tugging at him gently where we’re still joined. He follows obediently.

Before we make it inside, he suddenly wheels me around, clutching me tightly. His lips find my ear.

“If they search his logger, his computer…”

“I know,” I whisper back, and I feel him tremble. “I know.”

22

WITH FIVE DAYS left of Assimilation, we’re matched against Melva Brighton’s team. With the exception of Stacy Brass, we all get our asses kicked.

With just four days left, we’re paired against Team One, Heck Rangert’s team. This time, even Stacy gets her ass handed to her.

When there are only three days left, while we wait for the reaction center scenario to load and our briefing to start, Belgrade posts the rankings. Melissa Fallsgrath, our top ranked candidate, slips below Stacy. Krill and I are tied for third, and Paolo Donque, who on Day 30 was number six, has solidly passed Yaryk and is now fifth. He’s not far behind Krill and I. One false move and we could both slip.

There’s a wide gap between Yaryk’s six and number seven, but seven is a tie between a quiet, slender girl named Enna Frye and a heavyset kid named Ralph Baker.  Nine and ten, Mish Gann and Delphi Zurich, are so low that they’re just a few points above Lyder’s top two candidates.

I swallow hard, remembering Belgrade’s words. If his lowest candidates are beaten by her highest, I’m done. It will blow my factors. I have to find a way to keep them above Lyder’s group.

Mish is eager to do anything that will help her rankings. She has confided in me more than once that Belgrade threatens her daily with Disposal. She’s so high strung she reminds me of a Chihuahua—tiny and always trembling.

She came to Concordia to join her two brothers and her father, who’d assimilated two and three years ago, each at the age of twelve, to begin onboarding as a caretaker and a discoverer. They tease her relentlessly about being older than they are and also last on her team. They were never anything but first or second when they passed through. I can’t help but wonder, though, if they have any concept of how different Assimilation is now than it was for them. Everything Mina has said leads me to believe Mish’s brothers should show her more respect.

Until the scenario loads, I can’t give her a specific strategy to follow, but I tell her what I’ve seen.

“You’re small and fast,” I tell her, glancing at the screens in the staging area to make sure the scenario hasn’t loaded yet, “but instead of ducking, you always try to leap away from anything sudden, like arrows or paintballs. And in open space, you hesitate instead of just barreling for the pad.”

She nods, biting at a fingernail. “You’re right, I do that.”

“Your timing is off,” I continue, still watching the screens. “You have trouble leaving the safety of the barriers. It’s understandable, but sometimes you just have to take a chance. And you always have to watch for others you can hide behind. If one of us breaks away, you need to be right there beside us, taking our sheltered side. Let us take the risks. Use us for cover.”

She nods again. She’s enthusiastic until the buzzers sound. And then she freezes up and can’t make a decision. I resolve to help her past that over the next few days.

Where Mish is eager, Delphi is in denial. He believes that being number 10 on team three is enough to factor him through Assimilation with no further effort on his part. If Belgrade threatened him with anything, he’s not copping to it.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says when I slide into the seat next to his to try to give him a little friendly advice.

“Okay,” I shrug. “Fine. You want to get disposed, be my guest.”

He glances at me, but I can see he’s not buying it. But he’s curious what I’ll say to try to convince him.

“Rumor has it that if Lyder’s top ranked beats your factors, you’re done.” I tell him flatly, sucking down the rest of my water as the scenario lights up the screens in the briefing room.

It will be heat today. Desert. Dry, hot, and likely very little water while we’re in there. Delphi pretends not to care, but from the corner of my eye, I see him swallow and blink. He’s always lived where it’s cold and damp. The times we’ve run desert scenarios, he’s suffered. We’re generally in the reaction center for at least two hours, usually more.  His lily white skin blotches and burns every time, no matter that he slathers himself with sunscreen. The heat tires him easily, makes him slow and clumsy.

A loud rumbling issues beyond the walls as the grounds are set to mountainous, dry with a lot of loose gravel. This makes me smile.

“You’re steady on your feet,” I tell him. “You’re a good climber. You just have to climb faster so that while Paolo and Ralph and Enna are slipping around and going down on their hands and knees, you’re starting down the other side. If this is a paintball challenge, remember that it’s better to be accurate than fast. If you can set up a fatal shot in only a few more seconds than a wild burst, go for the fatal shot every time.”

Grudgingly, he nods.

The screens shift again. This scenario pits us against Lyder’s team.  My head dips.  On the plus side, they’re all ranked lower for a reason.  But on the down side, a win won’t be likely to do much to bolster our factors, and it won’t do much to help Mish or Delphi widen the gap unless they perform exceedingly well while Lyder’s top two fail spectacularly. That means we need to take them out at the beginning of the scenario.

I sidle up to Stacy, hating what I am about to propose.

“Stacy,” I say quietly, “I need to make a deal.”

She glances at me, then points at June Ellis. “If you take her out in the first ten minutes and you beat Krill to the pad, I’ll bet you’ll break the tie and end up third and he’ll drop to fourth.”

I nod. “Yeah. Listen, if you tell Melissa to guard me from the gate to the midpoint, I’ll assassinate her for you. In exchange, you protect Delphi and Mish and help me take out Lyder’s top two as quickly as possible.”

I can tell she’s tempted. Melissa is right at her heels in the ranks. Being ranked first when Belgrade presents our factors at Tribunal will give her a distinct advantage after Assimilation, when all the successful candidates pass on to Challenge. Challenge outcome determines our range of functions. Anyone ranked in the top half of their team will get additional considerations, and the top three will get even more concessions. No one has explained what those are yet, but most of us assume increased function entry level and allotments.

Stacy holds out her hand, and I shake it.

I can’t believe I’m going to kill off one of my own team. Thank God it isn’t real. But it still sets uneasily in my chest. It could affect her factors, and her factors could affect Assimilation. While it’s virtually impossible for a top ranked to fail to Assimilate, I’m unnerved by how easily I negotiated her for this exercise.

As agreed, Stacy lines us up and explains our roles, tasking Melissa with guarding me while Stacy announces she’ll guard Mish and Delphi. Krill and Yaryk will lead, and Enna, Ralph, and Paolo will bring up the rear.  None of this gives anyone cause for suspicion, for we often try different arrangements to see what works. At least half of reaction center is experimentation.

We spill from the briefing room into the preparation room, joining Lyder’s team. Unfortunately, they draw the “go” option, which means they get to choose which team enters the center first…us or them.  There are benefits and detriments to both. Going first allows the leaders to take cover and take aim.  Going last allows thirty seconds of additional preparation time to see what the threats in the reaction center are.  Sometimes it’s just temperature, sometimes there is some sort of programmed assault, like arrows, sleeper darts, or automated paintballs. Sometimes there’s a natural disaster to deal with like a flood or hurricane force winds.  It all depends on the goal: best time or fewest casualties. Sometimes both.

Today, the briefing reveals that it’s both time and body count. We’re issued paintball guns, which means it’s unlikely that there will be automated paintballs.

Lyder’s team opts to go first.  Other than oppressive heat, there’s nothing else happening, so the rest of us spill out of the gate and immediately begin to face calculated paintball fire from their team.

I take a minor hit to the back of my hand as Melissa and I crawl up a steep slope. She always goes for vantage point rather than for the fastest route.

The only sounds in the reaction center are paintballs ejecting, gravel sliding under shoes, our own labored breathing, and Melissa’s cursing as she’s caught in the ear by a paintball.

Even once we crest the slope and can see almost all of the reaction center, I can’t find Stacy, Mish, or Delphi.  But I see movement at Melissa’s right, and I shove her down, firing my paint gun in that direction. I take a shoulder hit for my trouble, but from the position on my uniform I can tell it won’t be counted as fatal.

We charge down the slope. Melissa, accustomed to prairie flatlands, skids and then rolls down. She’s limping. I close my eyes and consider carefully. We’re not at the midpoint yet. There’s a lot of reaction center to get through, and she’s supposed to be my cover.

But when I see movement again at her right, I fall back and raise my paint gun, spraying her right side from behind. The force of that many paintballs knocks her down. I dart over and fire behind us in false retaliation, then grab her elbow to help her to her feet.

I feel like a total jerk when she glances guiltily at me and apologizes. She’s “ended” and can only exit the center. She can’t shoot at anyone, and shooting at her will have no further effect. For that reason, she sprints away, leaving me open.

I don’t like the high vantage point that Lyder’s team might have behind me, so I decide to run for the promising shadows of a cave carved into the next rise. Whether the cave has more than one entrance is the mystery. If it’s more tunnel than cave, I could reach the pad with minimal injury, in good time. If it hasn’t got another opening, I’ll waste time figuring that out. And, of course, any number of dangers could be waiting inside.

I gamble on tunnel.

Almost immediately, I have reason to grin. Just around the first turn, I discover distant light ahead of me, which means there
is
another opening. Finding Stacy up ahead with Mish and Delphi is another small victory, at least until the earth shakes under our feet and a gurgle arises.

Great. An earthquake.

Crashing sounds echo and amplify around us. We’re slapped by a wall of water. The surge is so powerful it slams us all into the sides of the tunnel.

When I surface, choking, disorientation brings another flood…of panic. Someone grabs at the back of my collar, pulling my face under water. Mish. Her frantic flailing is going to drown us both. Her fear drives mine away. I kick her clumsily.  She lets go.

It’s not that she can’t swim. She’s choking on swallowed water, panicking.  At last, she finds an outcropping of rock to cling to, instead, and continues to sputter and cough.

The water isn’t receding, gushing out through either end of the tunnel the way it should. I find Stacy. Her eyes meet mine.

“Collapse!” we shout at the others in unison.

Crap. We’re losing valuable time, but if the water’s not receding that means both exits of the tunnel are sealed, and we have to find our exit overhead.

Because there’s still light toward what used to be the far end of the tunnel, I know there’s an opening there. Swimming out makes us sitting ducks for Lyder’s team, and it eats away at precious minutes.

The only good is that it appears Lyder’s team has moved on toward the rear meld. We exit the tunnel through an opening overhead, slip and slide our way to dry land, and charge ahead brazenly. There’s no other choice, really. We have to catch up, make up for lost time.

Delphi takes the first hit, a paintball just below the knee, tripping him.  Paintballs hurt. They aren’t just harmless splashes of paint. He’s limping as if the bullet were spilling real blood and not red paint.

Something moves and I nearly shoot Ralph, who was apparently left behind as a scout to protect us.

“Most of them are still out here somewhere,” he informs us. “Only Eric and Jeshua have made it to the pad so far.”

Lyder’s top two…Belgrade’s discards during the redistribution. I try to remember what her team looks like now. She’s still got June and Marco, but Julian was one of her discards. There’s too much time pressure. I can’t think straight, can’t remember the factors of my enemies. I run and duck, firing my paintball gun, ignoring the sting at my calf except a fleeting hope that it isn’t enough to make me a fatality. It doesn’t seem so, but sometimes you just don’t know. Sensors in our uniforms determine all of that.

Someone grabs me by the back of my shirt with enough power to drop me. Instinctively I kick out and roll, but it’s just Ralph.  I hadn’t noticed that he’d fallen back for a vantage point on any snipers.

“You almost walked into an ambush,” he pants at me.

On my belly, I can see the three shooters Ralph is talking about, and I end one of them with a shot to the upper collar. Ralph takes the one in the centermost position, but I only manage to clip the elbow of the last of the three as he flees. Marco…once my best male buddy on Lyder’s team.

There’s no time for regret or wistfulness. Ralph and I scramble over the next rise until we stand where our snipers stood. The view is fantastic, but there’re only a few small crags to duck behind. Ralph gets pinged in the bicep and swears viciously.

“It’s not fatal,” I say, bursting out of my hiding place to fire back at Marco. He flees. I miss.