Chapter 2
Love and Knowledge
The arrow whistled from my fingers and sank into the President’s papery skin, burrowing toward where his brain would have been if he had one.
The uptick in the corner of my mouth was replaced with a tight-lipped scowl.
I never needed a place to belong.
Never had one anyway.
All I needed was revenge.
All I needed was to kill the President.
A horn blared, and the lights in the range clicked from murder red to infirmary white.
I hung my longbow on the mount and grimaced at the time under the score display.
My practice round ran ten minutes late because Zade had scavenged cheap materials instead of letting the Nanos fix the motors powering the moving targets.
Cheapskate.
Not that I could blame him or anyone else on this level.
“Done already?” One of my best friends of twelve years boomed from behind the front counter, forcing my shoulders to scrunch up in guilt as I beelined toward the exit. Zade may have been cheap, but I was the liar. “Thought we were gonna spar.”
I stopped short of my escape and turned with both hands on my hips. “You could have joined me if you had hired some extra help like we’ve been telling you for months now. Barrister and Yu Ting need help. You need help.”
Zade pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes in a pout that looked stupid on someone his size. “Easy for you to say when you aren’t paying for any of it. That’s gonna have to change once you get the record score on your LPE and get a job paying that 700K Level salary.”
His pout morphed to a full-on grin.
Astrid and I had both offered to help him with the expenses at the shooting range, but he was stubborn with a weird need to show off in front of me, despite my having seen him at his worst—like the time he dated Penelope, or worse, when they broke up.
I shuddered at the thought of that girl and how she completely obliterated my friend’s self-confidence, but quickly rolled my eyes and then flashed a warning grin.
“I’ll give you every last credit I earn. You know my only goal with acing my exams is so I can get one step closer to lodging an arrow into the real thing.”
His face collapsed in a frown, and he stopped sorting through the metal arrows behind the front counter.
“You could give up this whole ‘assassinating the President of The Tower’ plan and just marry me instead, you know? We could get a little place on the outskirts with four kids and two dogs.” I faked a retch, but he kept rambling, “I won’t even touch you if that’s how you want it.
” This time I really retched. “We can do in vitro. I’ll stare at how beautiful you are every day for the rest of my life and be completely and utterly content. ”
I snorted.
“Yeah, let’s get ourselves sent to the Void for contaminating the bloodlines. You’re dumb. And I gotta go make history.” Wasn’t getting into that last statement of his, which only boiled my blood and curled my fingers into a fist.
That douchebag deserved so much more than what he was asking of me. He deserved someone who knew how to love him back, and joking with me about what his ex had expected of him was more than offensive.
Zade grumbled about me at least not taking my anger problems out on his arrowheads next time, but the tail end of it was cut off as I stepped out into the crowded alleyway on Level 346,765.
I speed-walked until the alley spilled into a bigger road with enough room to get a stride going. Then I yanked on the strings of the sack I had slung over my back and tied them into a tight knot across my chest.
When a chill trickled across the back of my neck, I fiddled with the knot with a shiver as I checked over my shoulder.
I knew it was stupid to use the ruler of the modern world’s picture at target practice, but Azazel dying was what fueled my every waking moment—and sometimes my sleeping moments as well if I was lucky.
I blew hot air out of my nose at the thought of him not being dead yet.
Still, not everyone would understand the necessity of that man’s death. In fact, pretty much no one would.
Two Mods in armored gear paced outside of an Administration building, and Citizens flooded the street trying to trade and make a credit or two for the day.
But no one was watching me. At least, not more than the usual too-long stare I often got from children without the Visex chip before their parents yanked them away from me.
Judging by the blank expressions around me, everyone over twelve probably had their focus on the invisible displays that their Visex broadcast straight to their brains.
Nothing should have set the hairs on the back of my neck on edge. Yet, I inhaled sharply and blew a raspberry through my lips as I retried the knot with a tremble in my right pinky finger.
Get it together.
Couldn’t let my nerves ruin the second-most important day of my life, or else it might take a lot longer to get to the most important day: the day when I would get to execute Azazel Ofer for murdering Lillemore Chapman and leaving me an orphan.
I squeezed my hands into fists before wiping my palms on my shorts as I took one last look around.
With my gym sack secure, I jogged to the L-lift using my footfalls and breathing like a metronome as I reviewed my foolproof plan to get the perfect score on my Life Placement Exams. Once I got the perfect score, even my lineage couldn’t keep me from getting a high-ranking job in the Administration that would earn me the access I needed to kill Azazel.
I had that same trickle across the nape of my neck on the lift.
However, I still didn’t catch anyone’s eyes on me despite my body’s warning that I was being watched—and not in the normal ‘We are the Administration here to protect you from yourself’ kind of way, nor the ‘Ew, she’s a dual-blood and gonna give us cooties’ sort of way either.
I’d had enough of that watching to know when someone was looking for a bit too long.
Self-preservation was my default mode, and getting noticed was my kryptonite.
It was halfway from the lift to the Administrative Testing Center that I glanced to my left just in time to catch dark, swirling eyes trained on me from among the sea of Citizens.
These were the kind of eyes that looked at a person and saw every possible way to snuff out their life.
The murderous eyes belonged to someone way too tall to blend in with the crowd, but at least smart enough to wear a hoodie that kept the rest of his features shrouded in shadow.
It wouldn’t have mattered too much, because I blinked and he was gone.
I pressed my lips together and tried to swallow, the action made harder by how dry my mouth had gone.
I was being watched after all.
And it seemed to be in the ‘I’m going to ensure your demise’ way.
Now is not the time to develop crippling anxiety and have a mental breakdown, Eliana. That would only prove to everyone that your mother was indeed completely nuts and you are an apple of the same tree, maybe even the same branch.
The clock tower chimed from a couple of blocks over, and I had to ignore my paranoia for the time being to rush inside the building. My foot had just stepped from the elevator onto the LPE floor when an automated voice came over the intercom.
“Eliana Chapman-Chen, please proceed to testing room number nine-zero-nine. This is your last call,” a genial female voice announced my lateness, but when I said that I had studied for the exam, I meant that I knew exactly where every testing room, break room, and bathroom was located.
I turned right and sprinted down the hall, thanking the grip on my sneakers when I skidded to a stop outside the clear gate with 909 etched in black.
All the other rooms I’d passed were full.
With graduation coming up, millions of freshly minted adults were trying to figure out what they were supposed to do with their lives and how they would get to the top of The Tower.
I didn’t need the test to know my purpose in life, but I did need it to get me there. I smoothed my sweat-frazzled curls and evened out my breathing before stepping under the sensor.
The glass gate split in half and recessed into the walls so I could enter.
The first room was a sterile, white space with a dated monitor hanging on the wall in front of me, big enough to cover my bed twice over.
Citizen ID: |
The cursor blinked green against the black screen.
I took my place on the stool in front of the keypad and typed in the same number I’d used multiple times a day for the past 18 years: 134444KLRZ.
The screen transformed from black to off-white, and a female voice spoke the words that floated on the monitor.
“Welcome, Eliana Glory Kai Xin Chapman-Chen, to your Life Placement Assessment.”
They’d changed the name twenty years ago to seem less daunting, but we all knew it was an exam. You passed, and you got a good life near the top. Failed and you scrounged for scraps under the table like a dog (if dogs still existed).
“Please sit or stand to your comfort. The assessment questions are intended to determine the best path forward for our Citizens. Content will include a range of academic, social-emotional, and physical challenges. When you are ready to begin, let me know.”
“I’m ready,” I replied without a second thought.
That didn’t mean my pulse didn’t pick up.
“Please confirm that the description and photo on the screen match your current physical presentation.”
The screen again morphed to black with green text describing the same photo that accompanied it.
A bit redundant if you ask me.
Then again, efficiency was never the Administration’s strength.
Line of Descent: Chapman AND Chen (Mixed Lineage)
Great.
Thanks.
Needed that reminder because I’d almost forgotten with a whole four minutes of no one staring at me.
Age: 18
Build: Athletic
Hair Color: Red-Brown-Black (Inconclusive)
Eye Color: Green
Significant Markings: tree/scepter-shaped mark on chest*