Solstice (10 page)

I lingered over the meal of meat and carrot pie. I was starving, but I forced myself to eat slowly so that I could be the last one in the room and alone with Matthews and Rueben.

“When do I receive my assignment?” I asked Matthews when Rueben was within earshot. He slowed his motions in clearing the table.

“You need more testing tomorrow,” Matthews said. “For now you’ll return to the dormitory.”

“What did my dreams tell you?” I pressed on. All I remembered was that they were about Sol, but little else.

His frown deepened, and he said nothing. After a few minutes of silence, I picked up my plate and stood, my face feeling hot.

“No,” Matthews said, finally speaking. “Rueben clears the plates.”

I handed my plate to Rueben, but felt awkward; I was perfectly capable of clearing my own place.

“Can you point me in the direction of the dormitory?” I asked Rueben.

He opened his mouth, but Matthews spoke first. “You will not attempt to clear your plate again.”

“I apologize.”
Do not clear your plate,
I repeated to myself. I was going to have to learn the new rules quickly if I ever wanted to get out of here.

Matthews’s face relaxed a little, and he gave Rueben a brief nod.

“Follow me.” Rueben set the plate back on the table and crossed to the door.

We walked quickly along the hall. It seemed that everyone was in a hurry in Phase Three, and I was out of breath when we arrived back at the dormitory.

Inside, he turned to me as soon as the door slid shut. “You mustn’t do anything to attract attention,” he whispered.

“I’m not trying to.” I kept my voice low as well. “It’s not like I was given a list of rules or anything.
You
won’t say much, and Dr. Matthews tells me even less.” The anger rose sharp in my chest, but I refused to let it spill. I focused on breathing in and out slowly, just as my caretakers had taught me.

Rueben glanced at the ceiling, looking for something.

“Can they see us, too?” I whispered.

“Yes.” He crossed to one of the beds and sat down, still speaking in a low voice, but not looking at me. “What did you do to get sent here?”

I hesitated. Should I be telling the maintenance boy my list of crimes? If I wanted his trust, I had to tell him something, but I didn’t want to screw up, either. “Will I be breaking another rule to tell a worker?”

His brows pulled together. “A worker?” Then his face relaxed. “Ah. You think I
work
here . . . like Dr. Matthews?”

“Well,” I waved my hand toward the door, “You work in the cafeteria—”

He started to laugh—actually laughing aloud.

I was so astonished that I let the smallest of smiles escape.

“I don’t work here. I’m like you—serving a sentence.”

“You’re a prisoner, too?” It was hard to believe, but maybe the maintenance work was his assignment. “Why did
you
get sent here?”

His eye glinted with something I couldn’t describe. “You first.”

I took a studied breath, trying to decide if Rueben was really going to trade information. “I was caught with an illegal book.”

No reaction. “Anything else?” he asked.

“Not that I know of.” I wasn’t about to tell him, or anyone for that matter, about the conversations about the Before with Sol. Or that I had been shocked by an agitator rod and should have forgotten the contents of the book. “It’s your turn.”

But he completely ignored me and stood, then crossed to the door. He typed in a sequence on the tablet on the wall. The lights dimmed. Without turning he said, “There’s something wrong with you.”

My body stiffened.
“What?”

“The other girls will return soon. We can talk in the latrine.” His voice was barely audible. He walked into the latrine without looking back.

I stared at the closed door and then, before I could weigh out the consequences, I followed him inside.

He was leaning against one of the sinks, his arms crossed as he watched me enter.

“What could have possibly been in that book to make them send you
here?”
His eyes were a lighter brown in here, the yellow more noticeable. “Even if you did some illegal research, there’s not much information to be found in a single book. Unless you were in an undercover lab.”

I’d never heard of an undercover lab, but filed the information away. “I don’t even know what ‘here’ is, or what, exactly, I’m supposed to do
here,”
I said. “Tell me that, and I’ll answer your question.”

One side of his mouth lifted into a smirk. “The reason you’re here becomes a little more obvious every time you open your mouth.”

I folded my arms, mimicking his stance. “What kind of prison is this, anyway?”

Rueben raised his eyebrows. “The Legislature might have called it a prison, but believe me, it’s worse.”

His tone made my mouth dry. I swallowed, but it didn’t help. I wiped my hands on my pants, then refolded my arms. “What do you mean?”

“Only kids they suspect to be Clinicals are sent here.”

“Clinicals?” The name sounded odd, but familiar at the same time.

Rueben seemed to read my thoughts. “I’d be surprised if you’d heard of them—
us.
It’s not something the general population knows about.”

“So, are
you
one of these . . . Clinicals?”

“Yes.” He said, reluctantly. “The kids who come here have displayed signs of being different, either in thought or action, which are always connected. But it takes a lot more than reading a forbidden book to get sent here.”

“I didn’t say I read it.”

“You didn’t have to.”

I stared at him, wanting to protest, but something deep down stirred. An explanation? Was this what my caretakers had meant by being different?

Sol had known I was curious, and he had seen me cry on that last day. Chalice told me that I was too paranoid about breaking rules. But wasn’t everybody? “What makes you think I read the book?” I asked.

“I can read it in your eyes.”

“I disagree,” I said, then clamped my hand over my mouth, realizing I’d spoken aloud.

“Of course you do,” Rueben said. “You probably disagree with a lot of things. That’s why you’re here.”

I shook my head, then stopped. He was right. I did disagree with things, but I always talked myself out of arguing, deciding to follow rules even if I disagreed with them. I guess it was part of what made me different.

“Jezebel,” Rueben said in a strangely caressing voice.

I snapped my head up. The way he said my name made me feel like he’d just touched me—not with his hands, but with his words. I folded my arms again, feeling hot and cold, uncomfortable.

“Ninety-nine percent of the population never even
considers
disagreeing with what they learn in school, or with any of the Legislature’s rules. You do it without even realizing it.”

That’s because immune to the Harmony implant and I’m a Carrier
, I wanted to say, but didn’t dare. “I make a choice to agree,” I said in a slow voice. “Don’t most people?”

He laughed, and the sound warmed me from my toes up, but I tightened my folded arms, unaccustomed to such unabashed displays of emotion. “Why are you laughing?”

“I’m a Clinical.” Rueben’s eyes shone, his words absorbing me again. “I disagree all the time. That’s why I’m here—so they can figure out why I do it and fix me, and prevent it from happening in others.”

I opened my mouth. Then I shut it. I couldn’t look at Rueben because I already knew what he was going to say.

“Jezebel, you’re a Clinical. Just like me.”

My heart pounded madly, like it was trying to escape a cage. “I’ve never broken rules, at least until I read that book,” I whispered fiercely. I wasn’t counting what Sol had told me about the Before, the flowers, or the seasons. Or that the agitator rod hadn’t done its job. My doubts had crept in. I was immune to the Harmony implant . . . did this mean I was a Clinical?

Rueben stepped toward me, making the small latrine seem even smaller. He was at least a head taller than me—like Sol.

“How did school work out for you?” he asked.

I bristled; he spoke as if I wouldn’t be going back. “Great. I tested into the A Level when I was twelve. I’m at the top of my class now.”

His eyes narrowed as if he didn’t believe me.

“What?”

“They allowed you into the program that late?” he said.

I straightened and lowered my arms, clenching them into fists. “I had . . . issues to overcome when I was younger.” I took a quick glance into those warm eyes of his, then looked away again. “Why? What about you?”

He ignored my question. “Did you spend a lot of time in Detention?”

“No!” I shot out. “I memorized the rules the first week in school. I avoided breaking even the small ones.”

“Were you tempted to break them—even small ones?”

“No,” I lied, perhaps too quickly. Even if I had been tempted, wasn’t it more important that I had resisted the urge? “What about
you?
Were you in Detention a lot?”

He raised a finger to his lips. We fell quiet and both listened. Low voices came from outside the door; someone else had entered the dormitory.

Rueben left the latrine, leaving me alone. A few minutes later, unable to wait any longer, I exited as well.

The two girls from the night before were back, sitting on their beds. They both looked over as I walked into the room. The girl with the copper skin gave me a slight nod. But the freckled one stared past me, and I noticed she was shaking. Her face looked pale as if she was about to be sick.

I glanced over at Rueben, who stood at the end of the room, near one of the far beds. He shook his head slightly, as if warning me not to do anything.

I ignored him and crossed to the freckle-faced girl. “Are you all right?” I asked, touching her shoulder. She flinched when I touched her, but didn’t meet my gaze. Then she opened her mouth to speak.

Her voice was high pitched like a young child’s, but I couldn’t understand anything she was saying—it was all gibberish. I threw a glance in Rueben’s direction; he’d started walking toward us.

“What’s she saying?” I asked as he neared me. Something wasn’t right. I felt sick to my stomach as the girl continued her babbling.

“Come on, we need to stay away from Grace,” he said, motioning for me to move away from the girl.

I stayed where I was. Something was seriously wrong. “We should try to help her.”

His hand grabbed mine. “Leave her,” he insisted. “They’ll be coming for her soon, and you don’t want to interfere.”

I wavered. I didn’t want to be in trouble in this place. I’d had enough of that. I followed Rueben to the far side of the room. The copper-skinned girl had closed her eyes, ignoring Grace completely.

“What’s going on?” I whispered.

Rueben hushed me just as the doors opened.

Three men walked in, a couple of whom I recognized from my testing. They approached Grace, their faces grim. One held a tan jacket with extra long sleeves. Grace didn’t pay them any attention until they grabbed her. Then she screamed.

“Stop!” I shouted, but Rueben pulled me toward him and covered my mouth.

“Hold still,” he growled in my ear. I barely caught his next whispered words. “Don’t call attention to yourself, or you’ll be in the jacket next.”

I nodded, and Rueben released his grip. I stared in horror as the men easily overpowered the young girl and thrust her arms into the jacket. Except they put it on backward, with her arms crossed against her chest, stopping her from fighting against them. With her arms confined, she could barely move, and the men carried out the still-screaming but completely helpless girl from the room.

Every part of my body trembled as the screams faded down the corridor. “What are they doing to her?”

“They put her in a strait jacket for her protection.”

I stared at Rueben, trying to understand.

“Strait jackets are simple restraints from the Before,” Rueben said, “when they didn’t have Harmony implants to track criminals or ankle cuffs to control dangerous people.”

Track? Harmony implants don’t track people. They only level out emotions.
My stomach went tight, like it might reject my dinner. “She’s just a kid,” I said. “She’s not . . . violent.” Just saying the word
violent
frightened me. It was on the List of Failures, something that we didn’t have in our world of Order.

Rueben must have heard the rising panic in my voice, even though I was trying to whisper. He put both hands on my shoulders and leaned close. “She’s in overload.”

With Rueben so close I noticed his scent for the first time—he smelled like he’d just been outside, in the sun, which was impossible. His usually warm eyes looked worried instead, as if watching Grace had disturbed him as much as it did me.

“The scientists raised the control level in her implant,” he continued. “They adjusted it based on dream-watching and thought they had it right, but . . .” He looked away. “Changing the control level doesn’t always have a positive outcome. In fact,” his eyes were back on me, “there’s only a sixteen percent success rate once someone hits overload.”

“Level of control? Success rate of
what?”
I hissed, my mind trying to wrap around what Rueben was saying. I looked over at the copper-skinned girl, who had curled up on her bed and closed her eyes. It was like she’d completely checked out.

“Success rate of living through overload and returning to normal brain function,” Rueben said.

I bit my lip, staring into his brown eyes, now dark with anger. Or was it fear?

“I don’t understand, Rueben.” I swiped furiously at tears that wouldn’t stop and my chest felt tight as though I couldn’t inhale enough oxygen. Something Rose had said popped into my mind. “I thought the implants were meant to protect us from a rebellion brought on by unreasonable emotion.”

Rueben’s fingers brushed my cheek, absorbing the tears on my face. “Don’t fall asleep tonight, and I’ll tell you about it.”

Rueben motioned for me to come over to where he sat in the dark. My hands felt damp as I climbed off my bed and settled on the one next to his. The remaining girl, whom Rueben told me was named Estee, remained curled up, and seemed to be asleep.