CHAPTER TWENTY
THE NEXT MORNING WAS MY FIRST DAY OFF EVER, BUT AT four-thirty, Frida’s voice filled my room, jolting me awake from a restless sleep.
What followed was a long morning of manners training for the upcoming ball.
Eventually, she began to teach me a new dance that was faster than the one from the other day, and there were spins.
Exhaustion weighed on me—I had lain awake most of the night, repeating the events of the past few days—but I began to move in my oversize gray attire and bare feet.
I lost myself to the sounds, the movements.
My heart pounded, eager for each coming spin, arms extended toward an imaginary partner.
The end of the dance was filled with even more turns.
For a moment, all the thoughts and fears emptied out of my head, and I relished the silence.
Dripping with sweat, I lost track of how many times I practiced the dance, savoring each step and turn.
But like all things I found comfort in, they took it from me before I could really enjoy it. The music stopped, the HI disappearing.
“Frida, play the song again, please,” I begged through ragged breaths. Nothing happened. “Hologram Instructor play the song again, please.”
Silence filled my room, and in the quiet all my thoughts began to come out of hiding.
“Dammit, play the song again,” I demanded, walking up to the black orb. I flipped it over, looking everywhere for a button, but nothing. I slammed it down on the counter, stomping off to the clear area between my bed and counter. I began to hum the song, but it wasn’t the same.
I gave up, throwing myself onto my bed, and checked my Comm Device to find two messages that I must have missed while I was dancing. The first was an official message from the Illum.
F13463233, your presence is required by M17292834 at 8:00 this evening following your preparation appointment at 4:30. All travel information has been loaded to your MIND chip. A Pod shall be sent now. Fertile Blessings.
The second was from Lo early this morning.
Gregory is your birth brother?! He’s so funny. When did you leave? Let’s talk soon.
I blew out a long breath. Gregory didn’t want Lo, that much was obvious. He was seeing someone else, someone it had sounded like he cared for.
Everyone has a role to play . . .
What role was Gregory playing? What about Collin? Everyone else in the clouds? What role would I play?
I glanced at the time and sat straight up. Somehow it was already four in the afternoon. Time seemed impatient today. Begrudgingly I left my bed, bypassing all the beautiful gowns, and threw on my clothes before grabbing my Comm Device and bag.
I found a sunny spot outside, soaking in the warmth, until I heard a Pod approaching the Sanctuary across the street.
I retreated several steps and pressed into the wall of my building as eight people exited the Pod, wearing helmets with shields that hid their faces and green uniforms that wrapped tightly around their muscular frames.
Plates of the same color were fitted to their chests and backs.
Each one had a thick belt laden with weapons and more strapped to their legs and backs.
They could only be the Elite Force. For the first time, I watched the steel doors of the Sanctuary finally open as the soldiers entered.
The air was quiet, and a pit formed in my stomach. I stared at that open door, craning my neck to see what they hid inside. I could just make out the entrance to a building. Suddenly, banging filled the air, then silence.
And then women started to scream.
I pressed my back harder into the wall. The cries of young offspring joined the women.
A part of me, the part that was concerned with self-preservation, screamed to run back to my living quarters, but I couldn’t move.
I was rooted to the spot as the screaming grew louder.
The soldiers returned, escorting offspring out. Disbelief engulfed me.
Several soldiers restrained the birth mothers as their offspring sobbed. I couldn’t breathe as the women dropped to their knees, their screams ripping at my soul as they reached for their offspring. None of them could have been older than four.
They were being taken away to the Academy.
I watched helplessly as one woman broke through two soldiers. She sprinted to a small boy, falling to her knees with a force that had tears burning my eyes. She clutched the boy to her chest, his small hands gripping her shirt.
“Please,” she sobbed, “please don’t take him.”
Even the warmth of the sun couldn’t pierce the chill that ran through my veins. My hands flew to my mouth in horror as one of the soldiers grabbed her by her hair, pulling her back.
“I love you, Albert, I love you. I’ll find you, I love you.”
“Control yourself,” a soldier barked.
The boy trembled as another soldier pushed him into the Pod with the other offspring.
A different soldier brought the end of his gun down on the woman’s head—she fell to the ground with a resounding thud, unmoving.
A gasp escaped me. Maybe it was a scream of my own.
My feet set me in motion, toward the horror.
I was halfway there when a large masked soldier stepped in my way, a hand on his gun. “Do you have the authorization to be here?”
My eyes flew to the offspring wailing in the Pod as soldiers began filing in. Some of the mothers had grabbed the woman they had knocked unconscious and others stood still, staring at the Pod. Frozen.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice broken.
“Where is your authorization?” The soldier stepped closer just as a Pod showed up outside my building. “I suggest you get on that Pod, right now.” He turned, stalking back to the Pod with the offspring and soldiers. The doors closed behind him, and the Pod took off.
I looked at the women. It wasn’t desperation but undiluted devastation on their faces. The ones screaming and crying were difficult to watch, but there was one whose expression was a blank, unmoving mask of shock.
As I scanned into my Pod and it pulled away toward High Town, I knew her face would haunt me for the rest of my life.
The offspring were being taken to the Academy. I wanted to tell myself they would be fine, but somehow nothing seemed fine, nor would it ever be fine again.
I exited the Pod when it stopped, barely managing to nod at Harold as bile climbed up my throat. The Starlings began their routine, an exaggerated version that included a haircut. I didn’t care—I didn’t hear anything they said. Those mothers’ screams replayed over and over again.
On the raised platform, fully dressed for the night, I looked at the woman they had created in the mirror.
Violet had styled my hair half up, with the rest curled and loose.
Large pear-shaped diamond earrings hung from my ears.
The gown was more ornate than the ones before.
It was sheer but had intricate gold-and-silver beading, tight, with a slit that exposed my left leg.
It hugged my waist and bust before artfully wrapping around my neck and extending down my right arm.
My left arm was fully exposed, my glowing shackle on display.
I only saw the Illum and the disgusting things they stood for.
“Why are you wearing that face?” Rose squawked at me. “You’re ruining my masterpiece.”
It did not matter the image they created. It wouldn’t conceal what was stolen from those women today. Being thrust into a room filled with the Elite and Illum, forced to perform for them, felt like torture.
“When I left my building, a Pod showed up”—I sucked in a shaky breath—“and men in green got out. They opened the Sanctuary doors . . . and took the offspring away. They took them away.”
“The Parting,” Violet stated as she drifted closer to Rose.
“The what?” I didn’t understand why they were handling it so calmly. Maybe I should have explained the screams, the desperation and soul-wrenching pain. “You don’t understand.”
“We understand. She lived it,” Violet said quietly.
“You what?” Disbelief filled me. They had lived it.
“We were in contracts before this. Rose successfully carried an offspring. What you saw we call the Parting.” There was little space between Violet and Rose, who stood unmoving.
“It’s our reality in the Sanctuary. When an offspring comes of age, the Elite Force comes.
They carry out the Illum’s orders. They did this. ” Violet gestured to her healing face.
“It wasn’t like that for me.” I remembered little from my own journey to the Academy. Helen had given me up willingly. It had been a warm day. There had been no screaming, no soldiers in green.
“The Parting is only for the Minors in the Sanctuary,” Violet said. “It happens unannounced, always when the other Minors are away for their workdays. There is no time for goodbyes.”
“Do the offspring ever see their mothers again?”
“I didn’t,” Rose said, her voice small.
“And the Illum, they stand for this treatment?” I demanded, thinking of Collin’s power and viciousness. I had wanted to believe so badly in the kindness he had shown me.
Violet stepped closer to me. Her bruising had started to turn greenish, resembling those green uniforms. Rose grabbed at her quicksilver dress, like she needed to keep her close. “Have you given my suggestion any thought?”
“I have.”
“And?”
I stared at my reflection in the mirror, then back at the two women before me, but I didn’t see them.
I saw that broken mother staring helplessly as her offspring was taken.
I had run toward the screams, not away. I was done hiding in the dark.
I didn’t know the extent of this rebellion, but I knew one thing.
“I want power.”