CHAPTER 10
The Pinkie is the ideal servant: tireless, unfeeling, and utterly self-sufficient. It requires no food, water, or rest. And, finest of all, the Pinkie requires no love.
—GOLNAZ RAHMANI, HUMANOID ARCHITECT
Dawn light creeps across the sky, slow and shy, as if unsure whether it’s welcome.
My Pinkies have emerged from their recharging pods and stand in a line at the foot of my bed, waiting to get me ready for the day.
While the robots apply my makeup and comb setting lotion into my hair, I replay the video attached to Dickie’s text.
As I suspected, Dickie’s Pinkie chaperone managed to send a report to the Office of Student Affairs before the Copper destroyed its data storage chip.
Now, we have the smoking gun.
The footage opens with the Pinkie entering the green first-year carriage and scanning the rows for Jane Bradford.
When the robot locates her, still shifting anxiously in her seat, lightning strikes the shield.
The loud, sudden noise sends students into a panic, triggering a frantic scramble as bodies duck and roll for cover.
Amid the chaos, the Copper unmuzzles the dogs.
The beasts charge down the aisle with singular focus, muscles tensed, jaws snapping with wet fury.
There’s no time for Jane to react. Before she can get up from her seat, the dogs’ teeth sink deep into her legs, ripping and shredding until her screams cause the other students to throw themselves against the exit doors in terror.
The Copper notices the Pinkie filming. With a panicked curse, he charges down the aisle and bodychecks the robot into the wall. Static crackles through the footage as he bashes his gun into its chest, again and again, until the screen finally cuts to black.
I turn away, nauseated by the sight of so much blood.
When I met Jane on the courthouse steps a year ago, I never imagined I’d one day watch her die.
Seeing her broken, lifeless face reminds me I can’t expect the rules I grew up with to apply here.
This world is merciless, and so are the people in it.
Five minutes before 7:00 a.m., I step onto my terrace and brace myself for more blood.
After Dickie handed the authorities the video evidence of Jane’s murder, the Copper was immediately arrested and sentenced to death.
Dad says the courts are moving faster than usual because President Reeve wants to make an example of the agitators.
The cold front from yesterday’s storm has moved on, replaced by the mellow breeze of late summer.
It’s the kind of day I’d spend at the river near my home.
But instead of lounging on sun chairs with Vivian and Hillaire, our skin pink from the heat, with jazz from Big Band Beats playing softly in the background, I have to watch more people die.
Executions in the campus Guillotine Yard occur at 7:00 a.m. sharp, a grim opening act to each day.
None are broadcast beyond the university walls.
Low-citizen students shuffle cautiously onto their private terraces, stiff as the starch in their pressed suits and day dresses.
Across the yard, the high-citizen students watch as well, but differently.
Their regal, sun-tanned faces linger on the condemned between puffs of cigars and sips from porcelain cups.
Reclining on their terrace chairs, the Blues exude the charged stillness of predators drawn by the sight and smell of blood.
Dad warned me that as a Public Person, I’d be surrounded by people who love death as much as I love life. At the time, I didn’t understand what he meant. The idea was too far removed from my world. But I understand it now.
The Copper who murdered Jane is led out first.
His mood is a stark contrast to the two students in line behind him.
While they shuffle forward with blanched, tear-streaked faces, the Copper practically dances to the guillotine, a broad, unhinged grin stretched across his face.
His wild, booming laughter echoes through the yard as the executioner forces him onto the bench and secures his neck in the yoke.
I recognize the erratic behavior. With nothing left to lose, the Copper must’ve taken Bliss after his arrest, making sure he dies happily.
According to Dickie, the Copper wasn’t working alone.
During his interrogation, he sang like a canary, naming three other Coppers involved in the hit.
They avoided the guillotine only because they didn’t deliver the killing blow.
I’d still choose execution over the punishment they received: five years in Pearl Penitentiary, a prison disguised as a rehabilitation center where inmates endure grueling medical and psychological experiments.
I avoid looking at the guillotine and instead use the binocular feature on my Bond to zoom in on the Copper’s wedding ring. It’s gold, with a pair of emeralds inlaid on top… no different from Dad’s.
“Justice is rendered,” the executioner announces as he pulls the release lever. “May its echoes be heard.”
The guillotine is too far away for me to hear the blade drop.
I only know the Copper is dead when green blood splashes across his hand, beading on the wedding ring.
All I can think is how surprised I am by my lack of closure.
At the very least, I thought I’d feel a sense of justice for Jane.
But even though the Copper got what he deserved and his death serves as a warning to other Bliss users who might be tempted to target those connected to the ban, I feel no relief.
Deep down, I know the Copper wasn’t a mastermind pulling strings in the shadows.
He was just another vulnerable person struggling with addiction.
And as I stare at the green blood, now completely covering his wedding ring, I wish the blood were blue.
Low-citizens didn’t create Bliss. We didn’t produce the drug, sell it, or benefit from its stranglehold on society. The high-citizens did all of that.
The irony is that most Blues don’t even use Bliss.
They know better than to indulge in their own poison.
They deal it, legalize it, and push it for money, power, and control.
But they don’t need Bliss because they already have something better: freedom.
And they’ve made damn sure the only time we’ll taste anything close to it is through a drug-induced haze.
When the executions end, I head to class, trailed by a cloud of ghosts: Jane Bradford, Charles Blackwell, the forty-nine Heretics, the Copper, and the two students beheaded after him.
All of them cling to me like phantom limbs, weightless yet impossible to shake.
Once you see the face of death, that’s it; it never leaves you.
Outside my suite, I take the elevator down to the Green Dormitory parking garage and climb into the flashy hovercar my parents gifted me for my eighteenth birthday.
It arrived on a cargo train early this morning.
It’s a hot new luxury sports model, and while I’d normally welcome the attention, right now being noticed is the last thing I want.
My Pinkie bodyguards squeeze into the back seat as I switch the hovercar to manual mode. Taking a deep breath, I push the throttle and lift out of the garage toward the Lecture Halls on the southwest side of campus.
When I reach the first-year Lecture Hall, the lobby is an overcrowded mass of blue, green, orange, and purple. I struggle to carve a path through. Students gather in circles or sit in low-slung chairs, their voices overlapping in bursts of laughter and nervous chatter.
The Pinkies escort me to my first class of the day, Civilized World History.
I keep an eye on my surroundings as I walk, noticing that no one is following me or taking pictures this time.
The change in behavior feels too sudden to be natural, leading me to wonder whether it’s due to the Copper’s execution.
At the entrance to the lecture room, the whir of hoverboards makes me pause.
I turn just as Edmund, Jack, and Dickie roar into the corridor on their boards, weaving through student traffic until they reach the end.
Edmund and Jack brake in time, while Dickie’s landing goes awry.
He stumbles, yelps, and spins to reveal a massive tear in the seat of his pants.
Edmund kicks his hoverboard up into his hand, laughing so loudly it draws the attention of half the students in the hall. “Should I have held your hand for the dismount?”
“I don’t need help,” Dickie snaps.
“Your ass says otherwise,” Jack cuts in, pointing at the damage. “Why the hell aren’t you wearing underwear?”
Dickie turns red and slaps a hand over the rip. “It’s… uncomfortable.”
“So is the view,” Edmund says, shrugging off his suit jacket and tying it around Dickie’s waist.
The jacket nearly swallows Dickie whole, hanging to his calves and making him look like a kid in his dad’s coat.
Edmund and Jack barely manage a glance before doubling over, shoulders shaking as they fall into it.
Dickie huffs, plants his hands on his hips, and mutters something about “needing room for things to breathe down there” as the three of them shuffle inside.
The lecture room is an amphitheater, multi-tiered, so everyone has a clear view of the professor. The Blues sit at the very top, while the rest of us are spread throughout the lower levels.
I keep my head down as I walk in, hoping Edmund won’t spot me. After what he did to Charlotte, I’d hoped our paths wouldn’t cross again. But now that I know he’s more than a vengeful ex-friend and that he’s engaged to Irene Hussey, I want to avoid him entirely.