Two instructors round the corner of the Specialist Academy, where doctors, dentists, and other highly trained and educated genomes are taught, and their conversation stops when they see us.
Trigger pulls me forward with more force than he would have used if he weren’t pretending to have apprehended me, and to my relief the instructors seem to believe our act.
“Did you see the bulletin?” one asks the other.
His friend nods. “The entire year-sixteen trade labor division. They must still be rounding them up.”
“Using cadets?”
“Yes. Didn’t you get that ping?”
We’re too far away by then to catch any more, but I’ve heard what I needed to. My plan is a good one, and Trigger is playing his part well. Yet every single step is loaded with the terrifying possibility that we will be caught.
We see several more small groups of people on the way. All of them are instructors or supervisors, and though they all stop to watch, none of them question us or seem to doubt that we’re anything other than what we appear to be. Possibly because we haven’t yet gone far enough to encounter anyone from Defense or Management.
When we reach the rear of the Arts Academy, Trigger pulls me to a stop in the shadow of the building. “There’s the gate.”
He points and I see that he’s right. The gate is open, and there’s only one guard.
But one is all it takes to sound an alarm.
I turn back to find Trigger studying the guard, a Defense graduate in his mid-twenties whose gaze constantly scans the training ward grounds.
“We just need a distraction….” Trigger eyes the trees near the gate, then a car approaching along the cruise strip. “Something big enough to get his attention but too small to require backup.”
A camera positioned over the gate catches my eye as it rotates, constantly surveying a new slice of the common lawn. Fifty feet away is another camera, around a slight bend and just out of sight of the guard.
“Remember when you said you could hack the cameras?” I whisper. “Can you give us another little malfunction?”
Trigger follows my line of sight and smiles. Then he pulls his tablet from his pocket and starts tapping. A minute later the red light on the far camera goes off.
A second after that, the guard pulls his tablet from his own pocket and frowns. He glances to his left but can’t see the camera around the curve.
“There he goes,” Trigger whispers when the guard reluctantly leaves his post to check out the malfunctioning camera. “It’ll come back on in three minutes. Let’s go.” When I hesitate, trying to calm the nerves fluttering in my stomach, Trigger leans closer to whisper, “Walk as if you belong and that’s what people will believe.”
I let him march me toward the gate as quietly and quickly as we dare without attracting even more attention. I can’t see anyone watching us, and with any luck, anyone who is will believe our charade.
It’s a short walk from the small gate to the back of the Specialist Bureau, and by the time we reach the far corner, clinging to the shadows cast by the building, we can see the Defense Bureau.
“Okay,” Trigger whispers. “We need to find a way inside without being seen.” He pulls out his tablet again. “If they’ve figured out I’m missing, then scanning my bar code at any door will raise an alarm. So we really need to…”
His voice fades into the background as a loud rumble comes from the opposite side of the Defense Bureau. “What’s that?” I whisper. Then I have to repeat my question a little louder so he can hear me.
“Sounds like…engines.” Trigger looks up from his tablet, frowning as the first vehicle rounds the far side of the Defense Bureau. It follows the cruise strip painted on the road like any normal car, but there is nothing else normal about this vehicle. It’s huge. At least fifty feet long. It looks kind of like a giant, completely enclosed delivery cart.
At the front is a passenger compartment holding a single man. A soldier.
Behind the first vehicle comes another. Then another. Then another.
“What are those?” I ask.
Trigger doesn’t answer until I elbow him and repeat the question. “Cargo trucks. They’re used to deliver goods we trade with other cities. But…”
“But supplies aren’t shipped from the Defense Bureau,” I murmur as I watch the procession of trucks. Something isn’t right. I can feel that from the goose bumps that have risen on my skin all the way to the strange ache in my bones. “They come from the central warehouse.”
“And soldiers don’t make deliveries,” he adds. “Goods are always delivered by high-ranking members of Management.”
The line of trucks stretches farther than we can see from where we’re hidden, and there seems to be no end in sight.
“Are soldiers deployed in trucks like that?” I ask, desperate for a logical explanation to calm the unease crawling over me.
“No. Troop transport trucks have removable canvas tops. And I’ve never seen more than a few of those dispatched at a time. They carry up to eighty bodies each, and this many could carry hundreds. Maybe thousands…”
We both seem to hear what he’s said at the same time.
Bodies. Thousands.
He meant living bodies, but…
“No.” I shake my head over and over. I can’t stop. Sorrel and Violet, and…Poppy.
All those nights we stayed up whispering. All those lunches spent criticizing the mushy veggies on our trays and imagining how we’d cook them. A thousand smiles and laughs, and at least a hundred field day victories, when I’d trade my icing for her cake.
She can’t be gone. I can’t even imagine the world without her.
“Hold on. Let me check.” Trigger taps on his tablet again while I watch the never-ending procession of cargo trucks with tears in my eyes. “Your instructor doesn’t have access to any useful information. I need someone else’s account….”
“How do they do it?”
“Hmm?” But he’s still tapping and scrolling. “I can’t access the camera feed. Someone has locked it down. Wait. I have one feed. It’s broadcasting from the loading bay behind the Defense Bureau. There’re still a dozen trucks back there.” He holds the tablet toward me, but I can’t look. I can’t turn away from the procession still rolling by. “They’re just waiting in line.”
“Trigger, how do they do it?” I demand softly. “The recall. Did they feel anything?”
“You don’t know that they’re in those trucks, Dahlia.” He’s tapping again.
“What else would Lakeview have to deliver by the thousands, from the Defense Bureau with its secret killing level, on the very day my genome is scheduled to be recalled?” Nothing else makes sense.
Not that the truth makes sense either. There was nothing wrong with them. They were no threat to the efficiency of the city or the citizens’ faith in Management’s ability to lead.
They didn’t need to die.
Trigger makes a strange noise deep in his throat, and I turn away from the parade of trucks to see him staring at his tablet. “A bulletin just went out to all your instructors. It’s done. There’s a crematorium a few miles outside of the—”
“No.” I heard him. I knew the truth even before I heard him. But I can’t…
I can’t…
I can’t…