Extraction (2 page)

There’s a line of people standing on the stairs on the left side, which lead to the top of the platform. Officials at the top make sure the sixteen-year-olds waiting for the hovercraft stay behind the boarding rail.

Logan and I push into the back of the line. I don’t see Grady, but he must be here somewhere. I hope I’ll run into him again soon.

The kids who can’t test and the ones who already did, like Logan, have to stay on the ground and wait for the hovercraft to the fields. They have no choice but to work the farms for the Developers until they’re replaced. Some are forced to procreate, to replace themselves. Logan hasn’t been chosen for that yet, but it could still happen. I worry it will every day.

I worry it will happen to me too, if I don’t do well today. We could run if we fail, but we wouldn’t make it past the electric force field surrounding the Surface settlement. We could take our own lives—and some of us do try—but too many fail at that attempt. And most of us are too scared to try. Most of us still hold out hope that the Developers will make an exception. That they’ll let us live even after we turn twenty, if we remain obedient and work hard.

But in all my years alive, I’ve seen them make only two exceptions—they Extracted two people at age nineteen, for whatever reason. Two out of several thousand people is not the best odds.

There’s a loud, whirring noise behind me.

A scream erupts from the crowd.

I tense, but turn my head to see what happened. There’s a flurry of movement among the group of older kids. A couple of them are suddenly frantic, tripping over their feet, trying to run, but there’s nowhere to go.

My fingers dig into Logan’s arm. A hov-pod has stopped in the street behind us. Two officials hop out of the back, pulse rifles in hand. Then two more officials, and three more after them.

They stomp through the dirt toward the crowd of older kids. They wrench people’s arms into view, and scan the numbers on their wrists.

They’re checking everyone’s replacement status.

My breaths come too fast. They don’t usually do this during the day. Usually, they take people away in the evening, so we don’t even see. So we can almost pretend it doesn’t happen—at least until it’s our turn.

Logan pulls me against his chest. I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on the shaky rhythm of his heart, but it doesn’t help. I can still hear the unlucky ones when they’re identified. They scream and sob and fight against the officials as they’re dragged into the back of the hov-pod, to be chained up and taken to quarantine. That’s what officials call it, but we all know what it really is: a gas chamber in the detention facility. A death room.

Two years ago, officials took Laila there. She threw me the boots I’m wearing now as they dragged her away.

The more of us the Developers keep alive to work their farms, the more of a threat we become. So they keep us weak and hungry, trapped by guns and fences, until they decide fresher blood would be more obedient. More useful.

Twenty is the cutoff age, but many people are replaced sooner.

Logan tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. He hums the tune of a lullaby he made up the night Laila was taken away, when I fell asleep in his arms with my tears trickling onto his shoulder:

To the krail’s caw, to star song

In the field, love, we’ll dance

’Til the moon is long gone

Until the world ends

When all the people marked for replacement in this area have been collected, the back of the hov-pod closes, and the vehicle heads down the road.

The rumble of a sky engine reaches my ears. I don’t have to look up to know it’s the departure craft come to transport us to the city. But not all of us. Only those my age will be allowed on board.

Logan’s arms loosen around me as the line on the ground starts to push up the stairs. “Don’t be afraid, okay?” he says.

“I’ll try,” I whisper. But how can I
not
be afraid? I’ve dreamed about this day for years. I’ve longed for it. I’ve dreaded it.

Logan gives me a crooked smile.

Bodies bump me from behind. I force my eyes away from Logan and take the first step up the stairs. Clutching the rail, I focus on the red sun glinting on the surface of the hovercraft. With every step, I urge my legs not to shake so badly. I walk up these steps every morning on my way to school. I can pretend this morning is like every other morning; I can pretend everything is normal.

I won’t look back at Logan. For days, I know he’s been worrying about what will happen if by some miracle luck is on my side today. If I win an escape that he lost last year.

But I can’t worry about that yet. This test is my only shot.

I won’t mess it up, no matter what.

2

The faint smell of coura dung and wet hay fills the departure craft. I pinch the bridge of my nose. It always smells like this—like us, the only passengers of this ship.

The ship rumbles as we fly, sending vibrations through my already shaky body. I clutch one of the leather straps dangling from the ceiling so I won’t fall.

There aren’t any windows except in the cockpit, but by now I can guess well enough when we leave the work camp behind and fly over the first of the forest trees. Lumberyards where some of the older kids work sit below us. The woods stretch for miles and miles. We zip through the sky above them at breakneck speed, but it feels like nothing at all.

The hovercraft slows when we reach the Pavilion, the city that takes up the other half of the lone settlement on the Surface. Only adults live here, and they all come from the Core. Most aren’t permanent residents; they travel to the Surface for research—top secret, so I have no idea what it is. The ones who stay in the city awhile work as instructors in our school, or wardens and guards in the camp, or nurses and doctors in the sanitarium. Governor Preston oversees everyone, acting in place of the Developers.

We settle with only a slight jolt on the landing platform atop one of the education buildings. The door opens, letting a gust of wind into the ship.

I search for Grady as I move with everyone else out onto the platform. But I don’t see him. There are too many bodies. Their warmth does little to block the chilly air that seeps through my clothes.

Officials lead us down a short set of steps, onto a narrow roof of black and silver panels with a rail that blocks us from either edge. Ahead lies a set of glass doors leading into the main education complex, which has a few more stories than ours. I come here every morning for four hours of memorizing scientific theories and mathematics, and learning about why our world is the way it is. Most of my knowledge will only be useful if I’m picked for Extraction.

That’s why only half of all children in the outer sector camps are tested. When we’re born, doctors perform brain scans to determine how much Promise we have. Only those deemed worthy of possible transfer to the Core get to go to school and take the Extraction test. The rest are doomed for replacement.

To my left, dark buildings rise from the streets, most towering over us and touching the clouds. Sometimes I picture myself standing on one of their rooftops and sticking my arms out. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and launch myself into the sky.

And I fly.

But even if I could fly, the towers are restricted for people like me. The only time we’re allowed to move through any part of the city beyond the education complex is during school tours or on the day of the yearly Extraction ceremony. Tomorrow.

I glimpse the gravel road far below as we near the glass doors. A couple pods zoom by, whirring as they hurtle around street corners with giant CorpoBot screens that broadcast news from the Core, but are usually silent when I see them. The pods pass the oval-shaped sanitarium, where girls not much older than me give birth to babies they’ll never see. They pass the spot on the gravel where Laila broke down after pictures of the new Extractions appeared on the CorpoBots, and her face wasn’t shown.

“Keep moving,” a guard says.

I turn away from the road. The glass doors to the education complex are already open, and kids ahead of me are moving inside. A small part of me wants to stay out here on the roof, to run far away from this test.

As long as I haven’t taken it yet, I still have a chance. I could still be one of the chosen.

A guard stops me at the door. Even though it’s not just me, even though the officials are stopping everyone to check us in, my heart quakes like someone jabbed an electric socket inside it. He grabs my wrist, digs his nails into my skin—I hide my wince—and passes his scanner over my citizenship number: S68477. Green light pierces my eyes through the slits in his helmet.

After a moment, he drops my arm and motions me along with a flick of his finger. My wrist throbs where he touched it. I keep my eyes trained on the floor as I move past him.

Two lines are forming in the fifth-floor lobby, one for girls and one for boys. They stand beneath a low, black-paneled ceiling. Officials patrol the room’s perimeter, including the exit behind me and the entrance to the hallway ahead, where instructors wearing scarlet uniforms and knee-high boots stand waiting with smiles on their faces. Now I couldn’t run even if I wanted to.

“Welcome to Extraction testing,” a female instructor says, her voice rich and deep. She’s darker-skinned than most and wears her ebony-colored hair in a sleek, high ponytail that falls halfway down her back. “We’ll see you one at a time.”

Words clump and tangle in my mind as I join the girl’s line: It’s going to be okay; it’s just a test; I can pass this.

But the test for Extraction is different every year. No one knows what to expect or how to prepare for it.

I’ve done well in school. I got the highest score on my final exams for mathematics and quantum physics. My instructors have hinted several times that I’d make an excellent addition to the team of scientists in the Core.

I’m not sure that’ll help me today.

I stand in line waiting for my turn with a trembling hand wrapped around my still-fragile wrist. I recite the prime numbers from one to five hundred to stay calm.

This year, one hundred and sixty-two sixteen-year-olds on the Surface are eligible for the test. Only the top ten will be picked for Extraction.

When I reach the hallway entrance, the instructor with the high ponytail steps forward, carrying a tablet. I notice a small, golden moon pinned to the neck of her dress uniform. “What name do you go by?” she asks.

The question catches me off guard. For years, adults have only referred to me by my citizenship number. “Um, Clementine.”

Her eyes flicker to the scar along my right jawline. The reminder plastered on my skin of the night I met Laila. The night an official slammed the butt of his gun into my face.

I’m used to the stares, but it still takes everything in me not to lower my eyes.

“Follow me,” she says.

Down the corridor and around several corners, she leads me through a door on the right.

In the center of the bright, whitewashed room, three instructors stand gathered around a machine: a leather chair enclosed by a cage of metal strips, adorned with knobs and wires. The walls to my left and right are made of glass. Through them, I see identical rooms running along the corridor. Kids climb into the caged chairs, while others climb out. The ones inside don’t look quite right. Their bodies are almost seizing.

My eyes widen.

“This will help us determine how Promising you are,” my instructor says.

No “it’s all right” or “it’ll be okay.” If she’d cooed in that weird way the nicer instructors do—as if they think they’re our parents, even though we don’t have parents—it’d be easier to trust her.

But whether I trust her or not, I have to go through with this. This test might get me off the Surface.

I set my jaw and climb into the chair. The instructors approach and place black straps over my arms and legs. They don’t tell me what they’re doing, but I feel them push small, mushy balls into my ears that block out everything but my faster-than-usual heartbeat.

I focus on the air flowing in and out of my nostrils, urging it to steady. I have to make a good impression.

“I’d like you to try not to run,” my instructor says.

Two pairs of hands place a lightweight silver helmet onto my head. It slides over my eyes, and the world goes black.

*   *   *

A soft hum fills my ears. The hum of the deflector shield in the sky.

Wind tugs at my curls. Desert dirt lies beneath my feet, though I still feel the leather of the machine chair against my back.

I breathe easy. This is a simulation. Whatever happens, it won’t be real.

I spin in a slow circle, taking in my surroundings. I’m on the giant plateau that lies a mile west of the work camp. I can see the camp from here, with its sea of shacks on every street.

In another direction, a dark building looms much too close to me. It can only be one place: the quarantine facility.

I swallow hard and turn away. In the third direction, a row of figures stands in the distance. Children chained together. I hesitate before slowly walking closer to see them better. No one appears to be guarding them, but they aren’t moving.

Maybe ten feet beyond them, the electric force field forms a hazy green barrier along the settlement perimeter. It runs from here all the way to the other side of the Pavilion, bordering the part of Kiel’s surface where we are allowed to go. Making escape on our own impossible.

Beyond the force field and on the edge of the horizon floats the moon, a vast and terrible giant looming over our planet, Kiel. A pilot can reach the moon by ship in an hour if he’s a fast flier. Pink gas drips from its surface onto the deflector shield built to protect us after pollution ate away our ozone layer. The technical term for the moon’s lethal gas is
letalith acid
, but everyone, even the Developers, calls it moonshine.

The whir in my ears falters and starts zapping.

pew-pew

A flicker runs all the way across my vision. For a second the shield fails, and I glimpse the true golden color of the moon.