Extraction (23 page)

The elevator switches to a vertical track and zooms down. I drop to the floor and clutch my knees to my chest.

Visiting a doctor won’t do anything to fix my Promise score. That’s the worst part. Cadet Waller said we have to have a score of eighty by our last training session, which is tomorrow. If I don’t reach that—and how will I reach that if the last session is anything like this?—I don’t know what they’ll do to me. I don’t want to think about it.

The elevator slows to a stop.

Ding.

The doors slide open. I pull myself to my feet. The main lobby of the health ward is ahead, and there’s a receptionist helping someone at the counter.

I don’t know if I want to be here anymore.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asks.

She’s staring at me. She finished helping the other person, and I didn’t even notice.

I clench my hands and step out of the elevator. I have to pretend this has nothing to do with my training session. I have to pretend this is just something I woke up with.

“Sorry, I’m not feeling very well,” I say, touching a hand to my sweaty forehead. “I woke up with a fever this morning. Cadet Waller said you might be able to help.”

“Oh, honey.” The receptionist beckons me over. “Yes, of course we can help. I’ll call a nurse. You can take a seat.”

I slip into one of the empty chairs, avoiding the eyes of the female patient sitting in the one across from me.

A nurse arrives barely a minute later. She slips a hand around my wrist and pulls me down the hallway. I think she’s saying something and scanning the tablet she’s holding, but I don’t really hear her. I can’t really tell where I’m going.

Inside a small examination room, she tells me to sit on the patient table. I do, my fingers crinkling the paper sheet beneath me. The lights hurt my head. Her voice hurts my head.

“Open up,” she says. She sticks something small and thin into my mouth that tastes like metal. The word pops up from an old school lesson:
thermometer
.

She pulls it out after thirty seconds and checks my temperature. “Hmm … 103.8 degrees. You’ve got a high one, dear. When did you start feeling poorly?”

I swallow the remnants of the metallic taste. “This morning.”

“Did you start feeling worse after your training session?”

Yes. Yes, I did.
I shake my head.

“Well, I’ll make a note of this. We keep careful records of all patient illnesses, so we can do our best to prevent them in the future.” She drops the thermometer in a plastic tin and taps the keypad on her tablet.

“Can you make it better?” I ask. My body won’t stop shaking. I’m shivering and it isn’t even cold; this room is a furnace.

“Of course! We always can.” The nurse sets her tablet down and snaps on a fresh pair of gloves. She moves over by the sink and opens one of the drawers beneath it.

I hope she’s not getting a syringe. Please, no more shots.

She turns around and rips off the plastic covering of a small, square patch. I exhale in relief.

“This is a cooling patch,” she says. “It should restore your body to its normal temperature in a few minutes.”

She lifts the hair off the back of my neck and presses the patch against my skin. It feels like ice. It feels wonderful.

“Thank you,” I say.

“If you start feeling worse, come back here right away.”

I nod and slide off the table.

“Good luck with your final training session!” She waves me out the door.

The door zips shut behind me. I stand there for a moment, my stomach twisting again because she’s right, there’s still one more training session.

But it’s going to be okay. Of course it is.

I hurry down the corridor, stumbling a little. I touch the wall to steady myself.

On the ceiling, sheets of black and silver metal form what look like fake windows. If I were a million miles away, those windows would open and I’d be able to see the stars. And Logan. He’d know what’s wrong with me, maybe. He’d make all of this better.

But there is no real sky here, and there are no easy paths to the stars. Or to him.

I tear my eyes away. I walk faster down the hallway.

The throbbing in my head gradually dulls. When I blink, I don’t see as many dots.

I touch a hand to my forehead and relief runs through me. I’m still shaking, but I don’t think I’m burning up anymore. I think the patch is working.

I move into the lobby and immediately realize I went the wrong way.

This isn’t the main lobby. A sign on the wall reads
MATERNITY WARD
. Straight ahead, the wall is made of glass. Through it is a waiting area with soft, mostly empty chairs. In the chairs, a couple females sit reading on tablets or twiddling their thumbs. They aren’t much older than me.

I turn away from the waiting room, wringing my hands. I don’t know how I ended up here, of all places.

But … part of me doesn’t want to leave right away. Part of me is curious to see what it’s like.

Down the hallway to my left, glass lines another, longer stretch of wall. Behind the glass, nurses roam between rows of incubators with tiny bundles of blue inside. Drip bags stand among the incubators with clear and orange fluids connected to tiny tubes attached to the bundles of blue.

A door opens at the back of the room, and a woman enters wearing a pale gown like the one I wore during my beautifying operation. Her hair is matted with sweat, and her eyes shift nervously. A nurse leads her to an incubator near where I stand, where the nurse reaches inside and removes the bundle of blue, then places it with care into the woman’s arms. The woman pushes the blue blanket back a little, and tiny hands with tiny fingers grasp the air.

I press my sweaty palm to the glass, holding my breath. I’ve seen pictures of babies before, but never ones this small. Never in the arms of their mothers.

Birth mothers in the outer sectors don’t get to hold their babies. They deliver them while under general anesthesia, and their children have already been taken away when they wake up. This way, the mothers don’t have time to get attached.

“Clementine?”

Beechy stands frozen at the end of the hallway, the door beside him half closed. I blink in surprise, then wince because it hurts my head.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say, swallowing. “I was … uh … wandering.”

He smiles a little and shuts the door the rest of the way. “That’s a pretty lame excuse.” He sticks his hands in his pockets and walks over to me.

“Well, what’s yours?” I ask.

“That’s confidential.”

“That’s worse than mine.”

He pulls a hand out of his pocket and presses a finger against my lips, stunning me into silence. “Shh, this is a quiet area,” he says.

“I don’t care.” I speak against his finger.

“You should.” He pulls his hand away. His eyes trail from my forehead to my cheeks to the bruise on my upper lip.

I turn away to look back at the bundles of blue through the glass. My stomach flutters. It might be nausea that the patch hasn’t relieved yet, but maybe it’s not. I think it’s because there’s space between me and Beechy, and a foolish part of me is afraid, or wants, to make it smaller.

“How was your training session?” he asks.

I press my lips together. Way to kill the mood, Beechy. “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“That’s what I said.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I twist my hands, staring at our reflections in the glass. My heartbeat feels clunky against my ribs, and my head still throbs a little.

I almost want to tell him what happened earlier. I messed up, Beechy. I messed up and now I might fail training, but I can’t fail because I don’t think Commander Charlie will give me another chance. I think he’ll kill me and get it over with.

But I don’t know how Beechy would react.

“Clem…” he says softly. His hand brushes mine.

Something cracks inside me, making it hard to breathe. Logan is the only person who calls me that.

“Beechy!” An unfamiliar voice makes me jump.

The door at the end of the hall flies open, and a young woman with spiky black hair rushes into view. Her laughter peals through the air. “I was right! I was right!”

Beechy breaks away from me. “Really?” I hear the smile in his voice.

“Yes!” She squeals and runs to him, flinging her arms around him when she reaches him. She presses her lips against Beechy’s. He meets hers with as much enthusiasm.

A sour taste fills my mouth, and I try to swallow it, but it doesn’t go away. I touch a hand to my forehead to steady myself.

This doesn’t matter. This shouldn’t matter.

They teeter in their embrace for several moments. When they pull apart, she casts her shining eyes to me. “Who’s this?”

A metal stud gleams in her nose. I think she’s the female instructor who handed me my gun the first night I was here, when I had to shoot the Unstable in the glass cage. Her cheeks are full of color.

“Sandy, this is Clementine,” Beechy says. He looks at me, then away. “Clementine, this is my wife, Sandy.”

The words hit me like a knife to the throat.

“Ah,
this
is Clementine.” Sandy’s smile widens, and she offers a hand. “Hi.”

He’s married. He’ll grow old with her, because that’s what people do here.

I force my lips to smile. “Hi.”

“Sorry, she’s excited because we just found out we’re going to have a baby.” Beechy chuckles.

“He’s wrong. I’m usually excited.” Sandy bumps him with her shoulder and squishes her nose a little. “But yes, today I’m more excited than usual.”

Beside me, muffled crying seeps through the glass. Frowning, the nurse snaps on gloves and fumbles with a syringe, while another hurries over carrying a small silver monitor.

“Oh.” I pause. “Congratulations.” I think that’s what people say in situations like this, since pregnancy is a good thing here, not something people are forced into.

“Aw, thanks.” Sandy squeezes my shoulder. “You’re a sweetie. And a brave one, from what Beechy’s told me.”

Beechy trains his eyes on me.

I look away, focusing on my breathing. No, I don’t care that he’s with someone. I don’t care that he told Sandy about me.

But I want to run. I don’t want to be here with the two of them.

Through the glass, a third nurse takes the bundle of blue away from its mother, while the first flicks the syringe and the second attaches tiny round strips of something like gauze to the child’s forehead. The mother holds her hands near her mouth, shaking her head fast.

Sandy pulls away from Beechy to move closer to the glass.

My forehead creases. Was the child born sickly? If it was, thank the stars it’s here in the Core. The doctors will be able to fix it.

“What happened?” Beechy says to me, softly.

“Hmm?”

“What happened in training earlier?”

The child’s cries grow louder and sound more like coughs. The first nurse eases the needle into its chest, and my stomach flips even though I’m not the one getting the shot. Sandy grips her arm with her hand.

“Please tell me,” Beechy says.

I shake my head. “I don’t know if I can trust you.”

He’s been kind to me, yes, but finding out about Sandy makes me think he hasn’t told me other things that are important. And what am I supposed to say, anyway? I might fail training; Commander Charlie might kill me tomorrow. Can you help me?

He takes a step back, looking hurt. “I saved you from Sam. You don’t think you can trust me?”

“No.”

“Well, you can.” He sets his jaw. “And you know why?”

“No.” And I don’t know why he cares so much, either.

“Because I was like you, but I had no one.” He puts his hand on my shoulder, and presses harder when I flinch. “Did you hear me? I was exactly like you.” His eyes cling to mine, like he’s trying to tell me something.

But I don’t get what he means.

“In training, I mean,” he says slowly, as if prodding me to think. “I came here five years ago an Extraction. I did well in most of the training modules until…”

I stare at him. He must mean the intelligence machines—he messed up while he was inside them too.

I open my mouth to ask him how he fixed everything, how he kept from failing his training, but a muffled scream from the mother snaps my attention to the glass. The child seizes in the arms of the nurse, no longer crying. Like it’s been electrocuted, and its whole body is heaving from too much energy.

My eyes widen.

Another nurse streams into the room, then another and another. A doctor arrives and waves his hands, giving directions. A nurse shoos us away through the glass. Another grabs the mother’s arms and pulls her away from her baby. The mother’s still screaming. “No, you can’t!” I hear her say, though her words are muffled. “You can’t kill her! She’ll get better!”

The child goes limp in the nurse’s arms.

This can’t be happening.

Beechy slips his hand around Sandy’s arm. She is stricken, wide-eyed. “Come on, we should go,” he says.

She doesn’t move at first.

I stare at the tiny hands poking out of the bundle of blue, no longer grasping the air.

No, no, no, they didn’t kill it. It’s sleeping. They’ll fix it. They’ll make it better.

“Sandy,” Beechy says.

She moves away from the glass and into his arms, her face pale. He leads her down the corridor.

“Come on, Clementine,” he says.

I’m frozen, my hand stuck to the glass though I can’t remember putting it there. My fingers shake. A nurse screams at me to go away, but I have to see the doctor revive the child. They do that here, don’t they? They have nurses and doctors and medicine, not just mud and water, like we had. They can save anyone, if they want to.

But they don’t seem to be trying. People are dragging the mother out the back doorway.

A nurse arrives with a small black bag, which she unzips and sets on top of the capsule where the child once laid.

It hits me like a knife: They’re going to put the baby inside, and take it away to a morgue and burn it in a furnace. Or do whatever they do with the dead here.