Outcast: A Corporation Novel (The Corporation)

Outcaste

RaeLynn Fry

Terebinth Tree Publishing

Idaho

Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold or destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, business establishments, or events is entirely coincidental.

OUTCASTE

All rights reserved.

Published by Terebinth Tree Publishing

Copyright © 2016 by RaeLynnFry

Cover art by Rachel Bennett

Image from iStock Photos

This book is protected under the copyright law of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork here in is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

First Printing: May 2016

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition: May 2016

ISBN: 9780989213462

ISBN-13: 978-0-9892134-6-2

Dedicated to my amazing husband and beautiful baby girl. I love you both with your whole hearts. <3

Prologue

Karis

Waking up in the morning is getting harder and harder, even though nothing about my morning ritual has changed. I’m still awake before the sun. I still meet Journey and we go to work at the factory. I still have my chores to do. I’m a small cog in an impossibly large, grinding machine that never shuts off.

But my brother and my Pair, Kavin, aren’t a part of my routine anymore and that rubbing fact makes it near impossible to go on as if nothing has changed; as if everything is normal. Life is as far from normal as I thought it could ever get.

How can the world keep turning when it’s lying in a thousand jagged pieces at my feet?

Ajna is with a monster. I don’t know if he’s safe, what he’s doing, what the Corporation is doing to him. Scariest of all, I don’t know if I’m ever going to see my brother again. He’s with Akin Hughes—the Corporation's President—and I don’t know if that keeps him protected or in more danger.

So yeah, I guess today is just like every other day since coming back to Neech—a day in a life I never thought I’d have to live.

I'm standing in the doorway to my bedroom, leaning my shoulder up against the frame. I can't iron out the creases in my furrowed brow. It's my body's reaction every time I walk down the hallway past my room. I take a slow breath through my nose, but the knots in my face don't loosen.

The small space is a mess. It smells. I can't use it. I'm sleeping in Ajna's room. And the cause of this upheaval is lying unconscious in
my
bed; dirtying up
my
sheets and fouling up
my
air. What's worse? I've been assigned to look after him. Yeah, he may have loads of information, but with this little issue of him being nonresponsive, it seems I’m the only one who has recognized his actual uselessness.

“Keep that look on your face much longer, and it's gonna to stay that way.” Papa walks past me.

“I can’t help it,” I say, trying not to taste the air as I talk. “Why does he have to be here? In our house? In
my
room?”

“Karis.” Uh-oh. It's that tone again. He's been using it a lot lately; with me. “You know good and well why. It's too dangerous to move him and he may have information we can use.”

“
May
,” I breathe out. I spin around and look up into Papa's scruffy face. I take in the new lines that seem to creep up every night while he sleeps. “I should be out there doing something,” I gesture to the streets, “out there looking for Ajna, helping Ethan. Not in here, taking care of a man who does nothing but sleep and who smells like Dhevan's pigs.” My frustration is plain and well known.

“That's a great idea.”

My eyes widen and I let the corners of my mouth turn up just a little. “So, you finally agree?”

“Absolutely.”

I narrow my eyes ever so slightly, the pale smile that was forming, disappearing from my lips. Papa’s failed to agree with anything I’ve said of late. “You'll let me start helping Ethan out more and start taking the steps needed to get Ajna back?”

“I agree that you need to do something and that our guest smells like Dhevan's pigs. When you get off your shift tonight, you should probably clean him up a bit and change your sheets. In fact, I’ll move him into Ajna’s room today.”

I clench my teeth and try to push down the sudden anger that’s flared up like a fire in my gut. I don't want to say anything I'm going to regret when I look back on this moment. I love my papa with all my heart and I'd do anything for him. He's all I have left, I remind myself, and I don't like where our relationship has been going lately.

“Now get off to work or you'll be late.” He kisses the top of my forehead and walks down the stairs.

“But...” I can't find the words. It doesn't matter anyway, Papa's already gone. I clench my teeth again and growl—actually growl—before shooting the most offensive glare I can at our
guest
. “You'd better wake up soon,” I say, “because I'm getting tired of this.” I turn on my heel and stomp down the stairs.

Ethan

The room is quiet. Breakfast is on the table. I touch the outside of the bowl. Still warm. Eta left not too long ago. I sit down to eat and see a tiny scrap of paper pinned underneath my meal.

Go help Dhevan in the fields. I don't need you today.

“Well, there's a whole lotta love behind those words,” I say to myself. I wolf down the bland, glue—like porridge and head out the door.

Karis hadn’t been joking when she told me that all of Neech was awake before the sun rose, but Eta's up before even that. She has to be, in order to get to all of her rounds before they have to be to work.

I wish had the self-control to wake up as early as she does, but my body still longs for the cushy life of Dahn, with its late mornings and deliciously filling breakfasts.

Being in Neech is so outside my element. I have a hard time being myself. I'm off balance. Sometimes, though, I think that the off—centeredness of being in the Outer City is helping me find my real self; that who I was in Dahn wasn’t who I was supposed to be. When I get that feeling, I don’t know what to do with it. So I push it aside.

I think the thing that disturbs me the most about the Outer City, is how overwhelmingly empty it feels. It doesn't matter if the streets are full, everyone moves about like they're lost souls looking for their door, hardly making a sound or imprint in the world they’re in. It's eerie. I much prefer to be out in the late hours of the day when there's no one around. At least, then, the silence feels normal.

There are only a handful of citizens out right now, all looking the same—heads ducked, shoulders hunched. Dusters and masks and scarves pulled up around their necks and mouths. The constant buzz of the filters echoes around me, an impossible-to-ignore white noise. The other citizens are used to it and don't give it a second thought, it seems. But coming from the filterless streets of the Inner City, it's a steady companion, always at the edge of my consciousness.

Hell. I hate comparing everything to Dahn. But it's inevitable.

It's been eighty-five days since Karis and I got back into Neech and sixty-four days since my father came for Ajna. Sometimes, on the really bad days, I wish that I were back home, in Dahn. That I'd never met Karis and been dragged into this world that I've found I know nothing about. I’m a piece of a puzzle, but not one that fits anywhere here.

I'd been lying to myself all along, thinking that I belonged here, in the slums, rather than the golden streets of the Inner City. I'd told myself that I was adaptable and could survive anywhere. But that was before my feathered mattress and hot baths were taken away. Before I knew what it was like to fight for the Neech's limited fresh water supply, hoping to get at least a few drops. Before I knew what it was like to have your stomach juices start to digest your stomach because it had nothing else to consume. Before I knew the anxiety and worry of wondering if those you love would live long enough to see tomorrow. Before I knew the people of Neech hated me.

At first, it was easy to continue being who I was—Ethan William Hughes. To be the one that Karis could lean on. The one that Jeret and Eta could come to count on. The leader our slowly growing pool of resistance could rely on to get them through this. Whatever
this
was. It was before I started not knowing what to do. What to say. Before the nightmares.

Days have turned into weeks and weeks into months. There’s no sign of Ajna being rescued. In the Inner City, Ella has gone mute. The Corporation is a silent, sleeping beast in the middle of the cities, waiting for the opportune moment to devour us with one swift bite. I know it’s coming, but I don’t know when or how.

I'm an orchid sent to survive in the driest of deserts. I'm not made for the Outer City.

It's at these lowest moments that something buried deep inside me is unearthed, and I know that I can survive. I know I will open my eyes after the night is done and again see the sun and hold in my arms those I care most about. Today is another morning, proving the night has not overtaken me, yet.

I stick to the main parts of the Outer City as much as possible. My father knows I'm here, but I don't need him to be able to pinpoint my exact location at any given moment by moving through different Gates and passing every Guard on duty. I've been refraining from using my Mark as much as possible. Which puts an even bigger burden on those keeping me here. Eta only has rations for one, and Karis and Jeret's rations have been decreased since the Corporation Sponsored Ajna. And then there’s Sai, the Sharma's illegal infant daughter.

Thinking of that brings the weight of the world back to my shoulders.
How am I going to stop the Corporation?
Every day I see the Outer City dying, piece by piece. It turns my stomach when I think about everything everyone has back home and the nothingness everyone lives on here. But changing the way the world works isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

I thought I'd be able to blaze into Neech, give a handful of rousing speeches, and lead an army to the Main Gate, ready and eager to take down my father. But it's going to take a lot more than words to build up the courage I need them to have, I just don't know what that is.

The people here are miserable and bitter, but they all want to keep their heads down, they don't want to risk making things worse than they already are. None of them are willing to do what needs to be done to make a difference. They'd all rather complain and have someone to blame for their lot in life.

That's not how I work. I take action. But I'm having a hard time finding someone to take action with me. Karis is sidetracked; part of me blames her and part of me understands. She helps me out when she can, but she seems....distracted. And it's not like we have a lot of time to talk about it. That's another thing on my list, right under
Destroy the Corporation—Fix things with Karis.

Not long before I left for Neech, my father gave me a note. I hate to admit it, but sometimes he knows me better than I know myself. He had planned on me leaving Dahn for something greater, and he
let
me go.

I keep the letter in the top drawer of my dresser as a reminder and make myself read it when I get up in the morning and before I go to bed at night. I had memorized it by the second day.

Live your life how you want, for the time being. Your freedom won't last long, anyhow; you might as well have felt like you had some say in it. But get in my way, and I take the boy from her in a way that even you can’t undo.