15. Chapter 15
Maryn
Ilooked up from the tablet screen and slid out of my seat.
“Angel, get your dad a drink while you’re up?”
I nodded, lifting the tablet and reading as I walked.
Maryn Veil. Report to one-hundred-sixty-seventh street at four p.m. today for testing.
I swiped.
There was no second screen.
“Angel?”
“One second, Dad.”
A chair scraped and the tablet clattered to the table. “I’m getting it, Dad.”
He sat heavily, and I exhaled.
I reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a slender glass bottle, twisting the top off and bringing it to the breakfast table.
“Two would have been nice.”
“You’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”
I grabbed a second bottle and set it beside the first.
He patted my knee. “Good girl.”
I smiled, grabbing the tablet and tapping the screen. Finding my inbox, I scanned the titles of each former message. All the previous messages had been long, detailed. Why was this one so short?
It wasn’t labeled Trial Five.
“Hey, Dad.”
He set his bottle down, staring at me unsteadily. “What?”
I glanced back down at my tablet. “Never mind.”
His gaze drifted to the window, and I padded lightly to my room.
Mom napped on days like today. Dad had been doing so well. Work, or possibly my trials, must have gotten to him.
I slid my door closed and winced when a crash sounded in the next room.
“Mother damn!”
I stood by the door waiting. When he didn’t call for me, I fell onto my bed and stared at the tablet’s black screen.
Had he always been like this? Or was there something about leaving the center—leaving everything he’d known—that had broken him slowly?
Another crash from the next room, and I pressed my eyes shut.
It wasn't something I could afford to think about right now. It was nearly three-thirty.
I touched the screen again and typed out a message.
I bit my nail, tearing off the corner.
My thumb traced its uneven edge. My heart slowed.
The screen lit up.
Paul: Nothing on my calendar.
Three dots.
Vera?
Dots.
Vera: Nope.
I bit the next nail. “Barren woman!”
I squeezed the finger as crimson formed at the corner of my nail and splashed onto my tablet screen.
Grimacing, I hopped off the bed. Another drop sank into my carpet.
I opened the door to my room, slipped into the bathroom and grabbed a cloth.
I scrubbed the screen, wiping away the blood, then wrapped the cloth around my finger. It was soaked through in a moment. I wrapped another layer and squeezed, rolling over onto my back and staring at the familiar crack in my ceiling.
***
I stared around the cold metal room and laced my hands in my lap. None of the other matches were here. Just the man who’d arrived at our door half an hour ago with a chaperone and advised me he would be escorting me to my test.
“Maryn Veil, daughter of Joel Veil?”
I stood. “Yes?”
“Come with me.”
A woman in dark brown moved swiftly and my stomach dipped. Only clinic nurses wore brown. It hid the blood better than any other color.
She turned into a door on her right. “Sit.”
At the center of the room, a chair with an adjustable back and odd straps was spotlighted under an ugly yellow bulb.
“There?”
Her pinched expression said she wouldn’t ask twice.
I moved, sitting on the edge of the seat.
“Sit back.”
I swallowed, sliding against the chair back and staring up at the ceiling.
“What—”
“Recite your information,” she cut me off.
I glanced at where she stood beside a low table. It was filled with glass tubes and sharp needles.
“Um.” I slid my palms over the straps. “Maryn Veil. Daughter of Joel Veil. Son of Thomas Veil. Son of Edmund Veil. Son of William Veil.”
She scanned her chart.
“And.”
“And?”
“The rest, Miss Veil.”
“I… I don’t know.”
She searched the chart again. Son of Brian Veil. Son of Marcus Veil.”
“Okay.”
She slammed the chart down.
“Do you need to be restrained?”
“What?”
Her eyes narrowed on me. “Does the sight of blood make you nauseous, anxious, hysterical?”
The memory of my bloody nail swam to the surface.
“No.”
“Good. Hold out your arm.”
I turned my hand over, face up, gaze tracking the nurse’s dexterous fingers, and she reached for a long needle, screwing the end into a glass tube.
She approached my side, and I tensed.
She wrapped a vicelike hand around my biceps, squeezing; in seconds, blue veins bulged under my skin, pressing the bounds of their cage, seeking an alternate route of escape.
A pinch and the needle slid under my skin. A line of red raced up the needle's translucent tube and began to fill the vial. I watched in silent fascination. When it was full, she released my upper arm, reaching for a swath of cloth and pressing it firmly over the puncture as the needle slid out.
She set the vial of blood down on the tray, wrapping a small white band around it.
“Give me your hand.”
I held out my free hand, and she laid it over hers on my arm. “Hold this here for fifteen minutes. Collect an orange on your way out.”
I slid from the seat, pressing down on my arm, my steps light as I strode the long hall. At the end, the man who had come to collect me held out a bit of tape, and I pressed it over my cloth.
“Here you are.” He handed me a perfectly round orange and I stared at it.
“I can have it?”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “It’s for the blood loss.”
I wrapped my hands around it, lifting it to my nose and inhaling deeply. An orange. My very first orange.
***
I slid into the back of a gray sedan, turning to stare out the back window. Mama waved, her hand swinging wildly. Dad wrapped his arms around her, pulling her hand down and whispering something in her ear.
I watched, my bag clutched tightly in my lap, until we disappeared around a corner and my home and my old life were out of view. I might never see them again.
I turned around, facing forward. Beyond the inner wall was a life I’d only ever seen on TV.
A window between me and the front rolled down. I spun around.
“Lucen?”
He tossed a black folder over the glass, and I caught it.
“You passed.”
He glanced at me in the rearview mirror.
“She took care of it. Just like I knew she would.”
I sat back, tucking the folder into my bag.
“How?”
He rounded another corner, accelerating.
“The less you know, the better.”
I nodded, looking out the window. Ahead, the wall drew nearer. It was tall enough that the sky was no longer visible. Even in the Middle, it had been my backdrop my whole life. The impenetrable barrier that kept our most fertile soil and fresh water safe.
My thumb found the edge of my nails and ran over them. Back. Forth. Back. Forth.
My gaze shot to Lucen. I studied his profile. I wanted to ask him what he was talking to Mama about the day I’d overheard them in the hall. I wanted to ask him a lot of things.
“Our man on the inside—he didn't place you. Elias chose you himself.”
I stilled. “What.”
Lucen didn’t look up. “You're in. That's what matters. We proceed.”
I said nothing, staring at his reflection in the mirror.
He glanced up. “Trust yourself. You’ve been preparing for this your whole life.”
I looked away, pressure building in my chest that had nowhere to go. Somewhere on the other side, someone was already waiting. Our spy. Someone I had no way to identify, no way to reach. Without a face or a name, I'd be cut off from Lucen.
We moved through the Upper-Middle, and the wall became impossibly taller. As we approached, men readied their weapons, two pointing them at us.
“This is where I leave you,” Lucen said, rolling up his window.
The car slid to a stop, and the lock clicked. I pressed the door open, stepping out into the dying evening light.
“Identification,” a man barked. I slung my bag over my shoulder, lifting the pin from my collar that had arrived at the house less than an hour ago.
“Step forward.”
He set his gun down, holding up a metal device that looked similar to the one the genetic inspector had used the day he came to my office. The men to his left and right held their guns up, pointed at me.
I stared at the man with the scanner, holding the pin out toward him.
A beep sounded. The two men on either side of him relaxed their weapons.
“Clear.”
He stepped back, and the massive wall before me began to open. I tipped my head back, watching it slide apart. It stopped, the opening only wide enough for me to fit through, and I moved, stepping over the invisible line that had divided me from the elite all my life.
The moment I was on the other side, it slammed shut, a gust of air kicking up dust and blowing my skirts; I wrapped a hand around them to keep from showing too much leg.
But here, at the edge of the wall, even in the center, it seemed no one dared come too close to the boundary.
I stood very still. No net. No way back. Just me and everything I'd been prepared for, on the wrong side of a wall that had just sealed itself shut. I straightened and lifted my chin.
A white car, pristine in every way, rolled to a stop, and I leaned down to look inside.
It was empty apart from the chaperone staring straight ahead.
I straightened looking around.
“Maryn Veil, daughter of Joel Veil. Enter.”
I jumped. The car had spoken. Leaning down, I peered inside the front window again.
“Maryn Veil, daughter of Joel Veil. Enter.”
I stepped forward, touching the handle. It clicked, the door sliding open, and I climbed in, scooting over soft fabric to sit across from my silent companion.
The door slid shut, and the car rolled forward. Unlike cars in the Middle, no glass separated the back from the front. I inched forward, leaning to inspect the front seat.
The wheel turned, and the car followed, gliding onto a street that sparkled in the setting sun.
Lining the pristine street on either side were rows of treelined sidewalks. I craned my head around to stare at a woman pushing a stroller, her perfectly styled hair pulled back to expose a pair of glittering gems in her ears.
The car rounded another corner, the road stretching out in front of me. A straight line, and all the way at its end, a shimmering expanse of blue that disappeared into an infinite distance.
Lake Michigan.